The leadership shared how the firm is expanding its infra consultancy footprint across roads, railways, urban infrastructure, and emerging verticals, while steadily adding new sectors every few years. They highlighted the role of technology, diversified clients, and global projects in strengthening execution, de-risking delivery, and building a robust order book for long-term growth.
Sheryll D’Souza: The fact that you are aimed to infraconsultancy and that too across various infra, be it metro, be it rail, be it road, smart cities as well. So in this entire spread, if you could help us understand where are you seeing more demand heat right now and which is going to be your focus area at least for the next three years?
Sankha Dasgupta: So we see demand across all the sectors and we’re keeping keep on adding new sectors every three years or two years. But the journey for us like in the roads and highway sector, we took 10 years to actually reach a matured phase.
The urban infrastructure took five years to do it. And similarly, the railways you’re expecting to happen in three years. And similarly, the geo labs, which is going to add to our work.
So the philosophy of the organization is to keep on adding new verticals every year, be it renewable energy, be it climate, be it other consulting part, you know, sectors. That’s being the focus for the organization. And another thing which I would like to add over here is that we’re not only domestically, you know, engaging ourselves, we’re also internationally engaging ourselves.
We are doing projects with ADBs, we have project doing World Bank funded projects. You’ve got shortlisted for two large projects in South Africa, in Africa, which have again World Bank funded projects. So, you know, overall, we are trying to expand our horizons.
We especially don’t want to focus as one single client, one single sector focus, but want to, you know, enhance the number of sectors that we are doing.
Sheryll D’Souza: Right. So you want to expand when you talk about your sectoral focus.
And like you said, every three years, you look to actually go ahead and expand. If you see that proof of the pudding is actually in your order book as well, which is actually twice the number of that your revenue number, isn’t it? Correct me if I’m wrong in that particular time. Having higher order book also means that you will have pressure on execution.
How do you actually mitigate those?
Gaurav Sharma: Okay, great question. Right. And the reason why it’s a great question is because not many people ask this question in the real world, because their assumption is ki sadak ban jayegi, you know, and buildings will get created, or it just happens.
Right. But it just doesn’t happen. Someone is doing it.
And every day someone is trying to figure out how to do it better. And you can only do things better when you are utilizing your technology, your people’s experience, know how the nuances of the ground realities that are there, you know, random flooding is so many things that can go wrong on the ground. How better you can plan your project execution relies on the fact that you have most relevant data available from the ground.
And that is what we do in house by default. So we’ll fly our drones, we’ll send our laser scanning machine, we’ll collect 360 degree videographies. And then we’ll utilize all of that information to plan better.
And then explain the consultant or sorry, the EPC contractors, how they can go about building better as well. So those are some of the ways that we can, you know, help build better. And to us answer your previous question also across sectors.
Government has released a lot of policies and a lot of programs, the Bharat Mala, the Atmanirbhar Bharat. And so looking at that correlation, there is a very likely possibility that all sectors are getting expanded simultaneously because we have a very ambitious nationwide vision to be Vixit Bharat 2047. And in that context, our ideology or our thought processes, say we have our road sector, which is already established, our railway sector, which we are establishing, urban, which is semi established.
So in all fronts, we can fire up quickly and accelerate quickly because the government policies allow us to build. So that’s for your previous. All right.
Sheryll D’Souza: So basically, technology is one of the reasons why actually that is helping you out when you talk about execution. You are and you have spoken about the fact that the tie ups with various government agencies as well. Government contracts also brings in credibility.
That’s one of the biggest things, right? Because that endorses the credibility that your company has. But along with government contracts also means that your cash will be locked for a longer period of time. Also, apart from that, given the fact that I want to understand how the payment system works for you all, because I all like on retainership or is this project basis or a consultancy charge risk commission? How does it all work for you all and how do you all benefit from this?
Gaurav Sharma: So given we have multiple forms of consultancy, so we are not defined by just one agency, not just one MORT or one NHAI in roads.
So that is not us. We are MORT, NHAI, NHIDCL, PWD, CPWD, all of those impanelments, MSRDC, MSRTC, so on and so on, right? So now because we have our wings spread across all these agencies, the rotation of funds happen relatively easily for us. So the order book size that you see happens because we go everywhere to sell our technology oriented services and solutions.
And then we have like a regular payment coming in from every milestone that we complete for different different projects simultaneously across consulting verticals as well. And then subsequently the geo labs work that we do as well that allows us to not only do work in-house, but since we have all the equipment, we have all the technical expertise available. So if there are other consulting agencies who do not have that to finish their government projects, they do come to us and be like, why don’t you help us do this? And then we generate our revenue from there as well.
So this is a very interesting mix of technology, consulting, representation that we have that allows us to generate revenue consistently and grow our order book exponential.
Okay.
Sheryll D’Souza: You did speak about geo labs and I think that is one of the bigger, sorry about that Sankha, but yes, geo labs definitely.
I just wanted to add two more points over here.
Sankha Dasgupta: One is that we are presently a common sector, majority of the work is coming from the government sector. But what we are also trying to do is to also increase our private sector share.
You know, once we have established with the government sector, we have the pre-qualifications, we have delivered projects, even the private sectors are now calling us. You know, till now it was most likely the big firms like the big fours, the big large engineering firms like AECOM, which are internationally, or the Jacobs, which are doing more private sector work, right? You don’t see their names in India in the government sector place. So it’s a different competition altogether.
But we are also trying to position ourselves. And the thing which is helping us is the banking advisory work that we are doing. We started in 2019 in that particular segment.
And now we are representing one of the largest institutions in the country, doing various activities. In terms of the payments that you mentioned, so all the projects have a different payment cycle. Okay.
So for example, if you have a DPR, you will have a milestone payment. Okay, so you keep on adding on and you keep on getting the payments. Then it’s a supervision kind of an activity which runs over a three year period, you get monthly payments.
Okay, because you have to debut your people on the ground. When you’re doing private sector, you know, we are very happy that we get the money in 15 days time. But of course, government cycles are slightly longer, we have something like to 60 to 70 days to actually recover.
Sheryll D’Souza: All right. So now let me come back to GeoLabs, right? It’s a rare asset to have, especially when you are into this entire consulting arena, especially infraconsulting. And the fact that you’ve spoken about what GeoLabs can do, so which means it makes your work easier, at least, or maybe makes work easier for the companies who have brought you on board.
So let me dwell in deeper in it. How has it helped you de-risk? Help the companies de-risk or the fact that they utilize this software technology for their benefit?
Gaurav Sharma: So the weakest link in a chain, when it comes to infrastructure, is the ability to get ground information, right? If you don’t know how the terrain is, if you don’t know how the measurement of your existing infra road, if it is a two lane road, what’s the measurement? What’s the ROW? What’s the land acquisition that is required? If you’re not aware of these things, well, then you have cost overruns, you have time overruns, your project delays, because you don’t know what compensation to give that person to make that two lane road four lane, or six lane road, and so on and so forth. So now if I have a technology that allows me to fly a drone and collect information of that particular area, go to the agency, get the existing revenue maps and update it on my GIS platform, superimpose them on my drone datasets, and then I can see exactly which house falls under the ROW quickly.
I can map the revenue information on that quicker. And then I can decide the ready reckoner rates over there relatively faster. And then the polity, the sarpanches and the meetings and all of those things happen very seamlessly because they see it.
And then they can compare valuations and then the acquisition happens fast. So those are so many, like, you know, intangibles that happen. And then obviously, you’re getting the measure, which the engineering team is going to use for designing as per your IRC standards, ensuring the best of the qualities and that sort.
So one dataset, or one mindset, actually, that is like, let’s get good quality information from the ground, and then let it explore in different, different directions for, you know, improving the overall infrastructure.
Sheryll D’Souza: All right. So that’s very interesting, especially the fact that you are into a very niche business as well as infraconsulting.
But thank you so much, Gaurav as well as Sankha for being a part of SmallCap Spotlight, especially talking about your business and your growth forwards. All the best. Thank you.