• Investment World
• eWorld
• Brand Line
• Mentor
• Life
• Brand Quest
• The New Manager
• BL Club
• Smartbuy

Stocks

• Quotes
• SE Diary
• Scoreboard
• Open-End Mutual Fund

Cross Currency

• Rates
  
  

Shipping

• Ports
  
  

Archives

• Yesterday
• Datewise
• Resources
• In Focus
• In Depth
• Events 2007

Group Sites

• The Hindu
• The Hindu ePaper
• Business Line
• Business Line ePaper
• Sportstar
• Frontline
• The Hindu eBooks
• The Hindu Images

M. Ramesh

Chennai, Nov. 10 Chennai-based Murugappa group is planning to enter the infrastructure sector.

It has recently incorporated a company, Parry Infrastructure Ltd, for this purpose, sources in the group told Business Line on Monday.

The group is yet to make up its mind as to which area to get active in. Under consideration are roads, ports, power and real estate — the last could mean a revival of Coromandel Engineering, a group company that has constructed several buildings in Chennai.

Sources said that the group wants the name (brand) of Parry linked to its infrastructure business and is considering a possibility under which Corommandel Engineering would be subsumed into Parry Infrastructure Ltd.

The $2.4-billion Murugappa group is into a number of areas such as sugar, fertilisers, farm inputs, abrasives, engineering and finance. Except in finance (Cholamandalam DBS Ltd) all the companies are doing well, but the group’s top brass has been having to repeatedly face questions about why the group is not into any of the “sunrise” areas, such as telecom, IT or infrastructure.

In private conversations, officials of the group admit that they missed the opportunities in these areas, but have also pointed out that it is still not too late to enter these businesses. The intention to get into infrastructure ought to be viewed against this backdrop.

In power and real estate, the group has some experience — it operates a 12-MW run-of-the-river hydel power plant in Tamil Nadu, a 5-MW gas-based plant and three co-generation plants at its sugar mills.

“By December we would have decided which areas we would enter,” an official of the group, who is involved in the process, said.

More Stories on : Diversification | Infrastructure

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page

Copyright © 2008, The Hindu Business Line. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu Business Line