Kolkata-based Kanoria family, promoters of Srei Infrastructure Finance Ltd, aims to enter into the telecom tower business overseas.
According to Sunil Kanoria, the overseas foray will be through Quippo, and not Srei Infrastructure.
The company website maintains Quippo as a ‘Srei initiative’, and it currently operates in the verticals of construction, oil and gas, energy, as well as valuation and auctioning of old equipment.
“Srei will not be getting into the telecom tower business. It will concentrate on infrastructure lending. We, the Kanoria family, may explore overseas foray in the telecom tower segment through Quippo,” he told
The Kanorias are presently exploring opportunities in Bangladesh and Myanmar, apart from other areas like West Asia, Africa, East Europe and Russia.
Asked about the mode of entry into these markets, Sunil said it could be through the acquisition of an existing tower company or by beginning Greenfield operations.
“Like India, the telecom tower market in some of these countries has still not developed. We might look at acquisitions or even starting operations from the scratch,” he said. No investment has yet been ear-marked for expanding overseas. “We have obtained some expertise in the telecom tower segment through Viom. Hence, we would like to explore opportunities overseas,” he said.
Interestingly, Srei had recently sold off its stake in Viom Networks to US-based American Tower Corporation (ATC) and signed a non-competing agreement in this regard.
Viom was formed through a joint venture between Tata Teleservices and Quippo Telecom Infrastructure (a part of the Srei Group) in 2009.
Double-digit growthAccording to Sunil, the proceeds from the stake sale of Viom will go to Srei.
Focus will be on retiring some debt and using part of the proceeds in the core business – infrastructure lending.
“The entire proceeds will go to Srei. We (Srei) target a double-digit growth in the loan book to the tune of 15-20 per cent, in FY17,” he maintained.
For the first six months of this year, Srei’s consolidated disbursement grew by over 8 per cent to ₹7,125 crore as compared to ₹6,594 crore in H1 FY15.
The group, in the process of finalising budgets, will accordingly take a call on money it intends to raise.