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ShareHyderabad: Gulf Oil Corporation, a Hinduja group company, which is sitting on a land bank of 2,000 acres across the country, expects property development to emerge as a major vertical from this year and fetch revenues on par with its existing segments.
The company operates in three key verticals--explosives, lubricants and consulting.
"Property development is going to be key vertical for the company and initial results should become visible in the fourth quarter of this financial year," Gulf Oil managing director Subhas Pramanik said.
Gulf Oil has about 800 acres in Hyderabad in addition to properties in Bangalore, Delhi and Kolkata.
The company is developing a 100 acre knowledge park in Hyderabad with total development planned is 12 million square feet.
"Initially, we were looking at IT sector. Now, we would like to change our focus to specialty chemicals and pharma research, including life sciences. These sectors are expected to match the IT boom of early 2000," Pramanik said.
The company is also developing about 40 acres in Bangalore, including 10 acre commercial zone and an IT and ITeS SEZ spread over 30 acres."These two projects are at advanced stages. In fact, the Hyderabad project should start giving us some results in the last quarter of this fiscal," he said. The Hyderabad project, which is estimated to cost Rs 5,000 crore, is expected to become operational in 2014-15.
Gulf Oil is also eyeing infrastructure space and would focus on roads, tunnels and bridges. "We have expertise in tunnelling and have been bidding for these projects. Now, we will start taking them up actively," he said.
The company has been working on a proposal to go in for a rights issue and a foreign convertible currency bond (FCCB) issue. While the rights issue would help in raising Rs 80 crore, the FCCBs would bring in about Rs 450 crore."By mid-December we should be offering the rights in the ratio of 1:3for Rs 32.This issue is for meeting the working capital requirements. The FCCB, which would be taken up after the rights issue, would meet the project costs," Pramanik said.
