Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Friday, Sep 30, 2005
Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Friday, Sep 30, 2005 |
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Info-Tech
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Telecommunications Markets - Stock Markets Aksh Optifibre aims 200 pc growth in topline this fiscal
Kohinoor Mandal
Kolkata , Sept. 29 THE Gurgaon-based Aksh Optifibre Ltd has targeted a 200 per cent growth in its topline in 2005-06 to come out of the red. According to Mr Kailash S. Choudhari, Managing Director, the target is achievable because the company has already crossed last year's turnover of Rs 38.27 crore in the first half. Aksh Optifibre, which is an OEM (original equipment manufacturer) for some of the leading global brands, has bagged orders from Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd as well as those from abroad. "We are confident of recording a 200 per cent increase in turnover. This should percolate down and we hope to record a net profit in this fiscal. In fact, even in the last fiscal, we recorded a cash profit," Mr Choudhari told Business Line. Regarding the orders from BSNL, he said, Aksh Optifibre was supplying cables and fibre reinforced plastic rods to the telecom service providers. "We have a number of export orders too," he added but preferred not to disclose the brands for which the company is an OEM. For the year ended March 31, 2005, the company's net loss before tax dropped to Rs 5.51 crore from Rs 7.08 crore in the previous financial year. Similarly, net loss after tax also dropped to Rs 3.23 crore from Rs 4.84 crore.
AP broadband project
The company is a major player in the proposed Rs 400-crore broadband project of Andhra Pradesh. Aksh Optifibre's involvement in this project is through Aksh Broadband Ltd, in which it holds 49 per cent. The project aims at extending broadband services to all villages of the State in the next two years. Aksh Broadband is the leader of a consortium of companies, which include Railtel Corporation, Tata Indicom, VSNL, INcable Network (Andhra) Ltd, Spectranet Ltd and Nuziveedu Seeds Ltd. The project suffered from some initial hiccups as a PIL (public interest litigation) was filed against it. According to Mr Choudhari, a favourable judgment was received in May 2005 and within the next two months, the rollout started. The project will provide services with a minimum bandwidth of 2,000 kbps and would have video-conferencing and Internet surfing. It will connect Hyderabad and district headquarters with 10 Gbps, one Gbps to each of the 1,127 mandal headquarters and 100 Mbps to each of the villages. The network will have optic fibre connectivity up to the village level. The company has begun talks with other State Governments for a similar project; but Mr Choudhari preferred not to disclose details as he felt it was "too early" to part with any additional information. However, the company may float fresh joint venture firms for similar State projects. "If a State Government wants to invest in the project in the form of equity, we will have to float a new firm," he said.
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