Captains Speak     

Published: April 30, 2024
Updated: April 30, 2024

Rail Vikas Nigam (RVNL)

Transforming from local to global

“As far as its business activity is concerned, Rail Vikas Nigam is transforming from a local to a global infrastructure player,” says Rajesh Prasad, Director- Operations of RVNL. He adds, “As a result, the company is now concentrating on all kinds of infrastructure.”

TOTAL CYCLE

The company is involved in the complete project lifecycle — that is, SLS, DPR, plans, GADs. It has innovative models for execution, excellent contract management practices, and a very lean set-up. The company was earlier the government’s biggest capex expander, and is now transforming from local rail infrastructure to all kinds of global infrastructure.

During the last five years, PAT has increased by 2x, turnover in the last 10 years by 10x, and turnover in the last 12 years by 14x. With this, one can understand how the company has transformed itself. The company has reformed, performed, and is now transforming itself from the role of contract manager to a comprehensive contractor. Coming to the commissioning part, Mr Prasad says the total railway infrastructure created up to March 31, 2014 was 5,100 km. Subsequently, the company has commissioned 11,000 km of railway infrastructure. The number of projects it had commissioned up to 2014 was 40. After 2014, it has commissioned 100 projects and handed over to the Railways.

RVNL has an order book of around Rs 65,000 crore, which roughly constitutes 50% from nominations (typical railway projects) and 50% from the market. In India, the railway segment is its main expertise, especially in the high speed area, and then come the metro segments. The company is executing metro projects in seven cities.

For the export business, it focuses on neighbouring countries like Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Mauritius, the African continent, where there is institutional funding like the World Bank and ADB, the UAE and Saudi Arabia. It recently participated in a PPP model project in Botswana, where RVNL has been shortlisted. The company is also opening offices in other neighbouring countries.

Regarding ‘Vande Bharat’, Mr Prasad says the project is on track. It has already signed the MCMA for maintenance. The coaches will be manufactured at Latur. The first step after signing the MCMA is basically a mock-up by the vendor. After the mock-up, the manufacturing of the rakes will be done. As for the schedule of manufacturing, the first prototype is required to be manufactured 24 months from the date of signing of the agreement, and the second prototype within 60 days of that.