Even in ordinary times, putting together a list such as this one is a devilishly difficult task. After all, there's something or the other happening at every company. So, how do you decide which to drop and which to keep? And in these extraordinary times, zeroing in on 20 companies to watch is a million times harder. The economy is booming, companies large and small are betting big on acquisitions, new products, new markets, and new strategies. Private equity and venture capital is flowing into little-known firms, start-ups are mushrooming across sectors, and interesting new technologies are emerging both online and offline. Therefore, to bring you a list of 20 companies to keep an eye on next year, BT's reporters and editors across the country spoke to a variety of experts, including D-street analysts, fund managers, investment bankers, private equity and venture investors, bankers, and senior executives.

As you can imagine, the list we ended up with comprised more than just 20 companies. To whittle it down to the required number, we employed a few filters: One, the company needed to be most popularly cited by our experts; Two, the list needed to be well balanced in terms of the nature and size of companies; Three, the company should not have featured in our listing the previous year. However, we had to make an exception in the case of two companies-Tata Steel and Maruti Udyog-simply because they seemed to be on everyone's to-watch list. For good reason. Next year, Tata Steel will begin putting India Inc.'s biggest overseas acquisition, Corus, to work; next year, too, Maruti, having once retreated from the diesel car market, will again seek to displace Tata Motors' Indica as the diesel car of choice. The others also have a lot going for themselves. Turn the page to find out.

ABB
Stepping Up the India Charge

ABB Indo's Uppal: The investments will continue no matter what

It has grown for each of the past 24 quarters, upped revenues from Rs 1,000 crore to around Rs 4,000 crore in that time, and boosted profits from Rs 65 crore to analysts' estimate of Rs 290 crore this year. Is it possible then, that there's more steam left in ABB India, subsidiary of the Geneva-based power-automation-engineering giant? Yes, say analysts, because with the economy on a roll and investment in infrastructure and industrial projects gathering speed, ABB is plugged into a multi-billion-dollar opportunity. According to estimates, there are power and industrial projects in the pipeline worth several hundreds of crores. No wonder, ABB's order book is brimming over, with contracts worth Rs 4,211 crore over the next several years, and folks in Geneva have declared India a "prime focus" country. In response, the engineering giant is ramping up manufacturing capacities in the country. By the middle of 2007, it would have completed a $100-million (Rs 450 crore) investment programme that will not just boost throughput, but increase the breadth and depth of portfolio offerings in the market place. Says Ravi Uppal, Vice Chairman & MD, ABB India: "There is no cap on capex. We will continue to invest whatever it takes." Apparently, investors have no issues with the strategy. ABB India's stock price has almost doubled to Rs 3,490 in the last one year alone and trades at a p-e multiple of 51.

-Venkatesha Babu

Adlab's Shetty: Plans to grow his 50-screen multiplex business fourfold

ADLABS
The Picture Gets Bigger and Better

Like in every good bollywood movie, the Adlabs' story has had a happy twist. "If you ask me whether I knew the business would assume this scale before July last year, the answer is no," says Manmohan Shetty, Chairman & MD, Adlabs. June 2005 was when Anil Ambani's Reliance Capital bought a majority stake in Adlabs Films. "The money, new talent, and management have helped create a media house present in every sphere of entertainment business," says Shetty, who runs a movies-to-film processing-to-multiplex group. How life has changed is evident not just from its Q2 results (revenues up 115 per cent to Rs 50 crore) but also investment plans. In the film production business, from investing Rs 15-20 crore a year hitherto, the company is now investing Rs 60-70 crore. It has struck a multi-film, co-production deal with Ashok Amritraj's Hyde Park Entertainment, set up a new animation arm that is already working on a 3D film called Superstar, and plans to invest Rs 40-50 crore in film distribution. Shetty is also looking to grow his 50-screen multiplex business fourfold, and scale up television content production following the purchase of a majority stake in Siddhartha Basu's Synergy Communication. Plus, "the demerger of the radio business is expected to unlock substantial shareholder value," says Chiraj Negandhi, an analyst with Enam.

-Shivani Lath

AIRCEL
New Owner, New Plans

Aircel's Kini: Sets his eyes nationwide

My mandate is to make Aircel a national player from a regional player," says Jagdish Kini, also answering the question why the erstwhile C. Sivasankaran-owned mobile services company made it to our list this year. As you might know, Malaysia's Maxis group (and Apollo) acquired Aircel in January 2006 and has since obtained licences to operate in nine circles. It has applied for 14 more as part of its plan to offer services across India. Maxis' proposed investment in cellular roll-out, 3G spectrum and WiMax is $3 billion, or Rs 13,500 crore. Aircel, which has 3.8 million subscribers mainly in Tamil Nadu, is betting on WiMax, or last-mile, wide-area wireless broadband (It WiMaxed Baramati with Intel). Neither the investments in nor the revenues from WiMax are expected to be significant, yet "Aircel hopes to get a first-mover advantage," says Ram Shinde, Aircel's Head (Business Solutions).

-Nitya Varadarajan

Shifting focus to smart cards: Yes, that's the Bartronics boss

BARTRONICS
Coming Soon to Every Pack in Your Shopping Bag

Mumbai-based Karvy Stockbroking has been quietly accumulating the Bartronics stock since it was at Rs 55 about five months ago. And Ambareesh Baliga, the firm's Vice President, has no intentions of taking his eye off the stock, which now trades at over Rs 100. "It's one of the best proxy plays available in the organised retail space," says Baliga. What does the Rs 30-crore (at the end of March 2006) Bartronics do? The Hyderabad-based company makes a wide variety of data capturing equipment such as barcode scanners, terminals and printers, smart card readers, and RFID tags. Interestingly enough, retail is currently a small part of Bartronics' business, "but we believe it will definitely constitute a major portion of our business in the next two years," says MD & CEO Sudhir Rao. Accordingly, Bartronics is shifting focus to smart cards and point of sale (pos) systems, and hopes to become a Rs 200-250 crore company in another two years. RFID-based solutions fetched half of Bartronics' revenues in the first half of current fiscal. But Rao is betting big: "We are working towards a Rs 1,000-crore sales target," he says. Baliga must be smiling.

-Mahesh Nayak

BHEL
Power-packed PSU

BHEL's Puri: India must acquire technology

How's this for growth potential? India plans to add 674,000 mw of power capacity over the next 25 years, and there's only one end-to-end domestic manufacturer of power plants in the country: BHEL. "The company currently has limitless order intake and earnings visibility," quips Satyam Aggarwal, a power industry analyst at Motilal Oswal Securities. "There were some concerns over BHEL lacking supercritical technology (requiring a plant of at least 4,000 mw with constituent units of 800 mw or more), but those issues seem to have been sorted out," he adds. To some extent, yes. BHEL's Chairman & Managing Director, Ashok K. Puri, for instance, has struck deals with France's Alstom (for boilers) and Siemens (turbine generator sets) for supercritical plants for ultra mega power projects. More importantly, he's lined up Rs 1,000 crore for acquisitions abroad. "India must learn from the Dabhol debacle and acquire technology. Otherwise, we could be investing billions on buying equipment and not know how to run them," he says. BHEL's topline surged 41 per cent last year to Rs 14,525 crore, and this year it may cross Rs 20,000 crore.

-Kapil Bajaj

BillDesk's Kaushal: From Arthur Andersen to India's leading electronic payment gateway

BillDesk
They are Killing the Bill Queues

In early 2000, three Arthur Andersen executives-M.N. Srinivasu, Ajay Kaushal, and Karthik Ganapathy-quit their cushy jobs to launch a start-up out of a small house on suburban Mumbai's Carter Road. The trio thought they had a great payment management service idea (read: third-party bill collection) and, hence, kicked off IndiaIdeas. And, boy, were they right. Today, as many as 25 banks (Citi, SBI, HDFC Bank, among others) and more than 100 companies (including Hutch, Reliance Energy, Tata AIG) are part of IndiaIdeas' electronic payment gateway, BillDesk. "We are the largest player with over a million bills processed every month," says Kaushal. BillDesk already has 240 employees across 30 cities, but has plans of ramping up operations. "There is a huge potential. The share of online billing, which is less than 2 per cent, is expected to go up to 6-8 per cent in the next three to five years," says Kaushal. There are plenty of believers in BillDesk's business model. In June this year, SBI and us-based venture capital firm Clearstone Ventures invested $7.5 million (Rs 34 crore) in the company. So, expect an IPO a few years down the line.

-Anand Adhikari

DLF
The IPO is in Sight Again

DLF: Its troubled IPO issue could be resolved shortly

The Delhi-based real estate giant DLF's initial public offering (IPO) may well have been a top contender for the most talked of non-event of the year. The company had been planning to roll out one of India's biggest-and realty's biggest-IPOs aimed at raising more than Rs 10,000 crore, until its minority shareholders cried foul and forced SEBI to show the red flag. When BT went to press, DLF, which had been valued between Rs 77,200-85,300 crore, had an extra-ordinary general body meeting coming up on November 14 to settle the issue. That means the IPO is in sight again. "If the minority shareholder issue is resolved, then the public offer could hit the market during the January-March quarter," confirms Rajeev Talwar, DLF group's Executive Director. The IPO, however, is not the only reason why DLF has made it to our list. The other reason is, of course, the real estate boom. The Indian real estate market estimated at $40-45 billion (Rs 1.8-2 lakh crore) is expected to grow at 20 per cent compounded annual growth rate over the next five years or so, according to UBS Investment Research. And DLF has plans for everything from houses to commercial buildings to SEZs. "Eventually each of (these) verticals should become large enough to become separate companies," says Talwar. Now, that is some ambition.

-Shalini S. Dagar

All smiles and why not? Prasad (L) & Satish Reddy, MD

Dr Reddy's
The Recipe is Working

It's possibly the highest-ever quarterly sales announced by an Indian drug company. For the second quarter of this year, Dr Reddy's Labs announced a year-on-year 245 per cent growth in topline to Rs 2,004 crore and a 214 per cent jump in net profits to Rs 280 crore. If all goes well, Dr Reddy's will be pushing a billion dollars in revenues before 2007 is rung out. "The acquisitions added a lot of firepower to the business coupled with a few upsides," says company CEO, G.V. Prasad. The new acquisitions such as betapharm fetched a fifth of the Q2 revenues, and international sales made up an impressive 88 per cent versus 61 per cent same period last year. There are two other reasons to watch Dr Reddy's: One, its generic version of GSK's $1-billion drug Zofran (an anti-emetic), Prasad says, is likely to get an approval. That could mean Rs 225 crore in profits during the exclusivity period. Two, one of its new molecules (balaglitazone) for treatment of diabetes is expected to enter phase III of clinical trials over the next six months, making Dr Reddy's India's first company to have a phase III asset. Also, Prasad isn't ruling out more acquisitions abroad.

-E. Kumar Sharma

Ginger
Smart Basics for Road Warriors

Ginger, Bangalore: This no-frills budget hotel has been an instant hit

It was an idea borrowed straight out of C.K. Prahalad's bestseller on bottom of the pyramid (bop) marketing. No surprises, then, that Indian Hotels' budget hotel subsidiary, Roots Corporation, is pleased as punch with the results. Its no-frills budget hotel Ginger, launched in June 2004, has been a roaring success. All Ginger properties (Bangalore, Mysore, Haridwar, Pune, Trivandrum and Bhubaneshwar) have a simple layout and design with around 100 rooms in each property. Since land price is a key determinant of the eventual tariff, most of these hotels are located on the outskirts or at least outside the central business district, where prices tend to be more reasonable. There's no room service or travel desk or swimming pool, but the rooms have everything a budget-conscious business traveler would need, including Wi-Fi. Also, there's a closed circuit camera in the lobby of all Ginger hotels for greater security. There are just two types of rooms, single bed (180 sq. ft) and double bed (220 sq. ft) with transparent prices of Rs 999 and Rs 1,199, respectively that are uniform across properties. "We call our model smart basics, which means good quality at affordable prices," says Prabhat Pani, CEO, Roots. By March 2008, Ginger hopes to be in 30 cities. Road warriors, rejoice.

-Venkatesha Babu

Coming soon: New-look Delhi & Hyderabad airports, courtesy GMR

GMR Infrastructure
The Long Road from Jute to Airports

If the Hyderabad airport gets up and running by April 2008 and Delhi too sports a spiffy new one by 2010, air travellers will have one Bangalore-based company to thank: GMR Infrastructure. The Hyderabad airport is a Rs 2,284-crore project, while Delhi's has a cost of Rs 7,000 crore. That should make GMR one of the biggest infrastructure developers. For a company that entered infrastructure only in the 90s, GMR has been able to bag some big projects. The airports apart, GMR has landed a number of road projects under the Golden Quadrilateral project. Focussing on project development, as opposed to mere execution, has enabled GMR, which once was in the jute business, to build assets worth Rs 15,000 crore from Rs 900 crore in 1999.

GMR executives say that the group has a healthy blend of fixed and volume-driven revenues. Investors in the newly-ipoed company have nothing to complain about. The stock is trading 70 per cent above the issue price of Rs 210. "As India's infrastructure needs explode, GMR Group will strive to meet them," says Chairman G.M. Rao. Investors expect as much.

-Venkatesha Babu

Idea Cellular
Its Time Has Come

Idea Cellular's Aga: Man to watch

For Sanjeev Aga, the last several months have been incredibly busy. After the Tatas sold their stake in Idea to the Aditya Birla Group, the cellular services provider went on an overdrive and launched operations in three new circles (Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, and Uttar Pradesh-East), taking the tally to 11. Between March and September this year, the subscriber base jumped 54 per cent, and first half revenues rose 38 per cent to Rs 1,906 crore and net profit by 160 per cent to Rs 192 crore. "We are in a very strong position in the circles we operate and our renewed focus will help us to power ahead," states Aga, who has taken over as Idea Cellular's Managing Director from his earlier assignment as MD of Aditya Birla Nuvo.

The big story for Idea is yet to unfold, though. With a pan-India launch on the anvil and licence awaited for the National Long Distance Service (NLD) service, growth-and a place alongside Bharti, Hutch and Reliance Infocomm-appears inevitable. Then, there's the IPO story. With Idea already valued at Rs 12,000 crore following private equity investment from Providence Partners and ChrysCapital and its footprint growing, the company can only get more valuable. "To us, nothing is more important than Idea being a top-notch company. We want it to be a class act," says Aga in modesty. A good idea, too.

-Krishna Gopalan

Kale's Jain: Looking to leverage the company's position to cater to the entire travel industry

Kale Consultants
Reprogrammed, But Keeping Its Fingers Crossed

It's possibly the only reinvention of its kind in the Indian it industry and if it works, it may well inspire several other small companies to find their own niches. Founded in 1986, Kale continued to operate in a number of industry verticals but without achieving viable scale in any of them. Starting 2001, the Pune-based company began spinning out all the verticals (banking, generic software, and healthcare) and selling them to willing buyers. In October 2004, it acquired Cognosys, a travel solutions company, and merged it with itself. "We focussed on the airline vertical as we've had some global exposure there," says Vipul Jain, CEO & MD, Kale. With the result, the Rs 73-crore firm has emerged as a focussed airline software and BPO player, offering outsourced services to airlines that include passenger revenue accounting, cargo management and travel solutions for travel companies. Over the years, Kale has shifted to a 'per transaction' model from the "licensing model' it followed earlier. "We have the foundation. Now we are looking to leverage our position to cater to the entire travel industry," says Jain. Investors aren't yet convinced, since the stock has stayed stoically between Rs 90 and Rs 100 for a year now. Just the same, it's a reinvention worth watching.

-Shaleen Agrawal

Larsen & Toubro
A Makeover on Many Fronts

L&T: All set to become bigger and more diversified

Not too far in the future, Larsen & Toubro may look very different than what it does today. While its flagship engineering and construction business still fetches 70 per cent of the revenues, Chairman & Managing Director A.M. Naik seems determined to turn the conglomerate into a bigger and even more diversified entity. Among L&T's new forays are the ones into shipbuilding, defence equipment, and nuclear power. Simultaneously, Naik is pushing L&T into newer markets overseas in the core business. For instance, West Asia and China, he says, will be important makets. "Gulf (alone) will bring in $1 billion (Rs 4,500 crore) in revenues next year," says Naik. In power, L&T Power Development is moving from merely building power plants to running and maintaining them, thus creating steadier revenues. L&T Infotech, the IT arm, is planning to add 3,000 employees to the existing 8,000 by March 2008. Some time soon in the future, Naik expects 60 per cent of L&T's revenues to come from projects, 30 per cent from manufacturing, and 10 per cent from services, against 75, 20, and 5 per cent, respectively, at present. "Infrastructure is a long-term play and the most demanding one," he says. And few Indian companies can claim to have the sort of execution skills that L&T has.

-Shaleen Agrawal

Maruti: Khattar has a bolder diesel plan this time around

Maruti
Driving (Back) Into Diesel

As a rule, a company never gets to be on our "to watch" list for two years in a row. If we are breaking that rule for Maruti, it's for good reason. Next year is when the market leader will ride back into the diesel segment with a vengeance, putting pressure on Tata Motors' small car, the Indica. This will mark Marurti's second foray into diesel. The first attempt, made on the back of Zen diesel, didn't quite work. This time around, Maruti is dropping a 1.3-litre diesel engine into the hot selling small car, Swift. Between the first and second attempt, Maruti has increased car making capacity from 4 to 6 lakh per annum, and also set up a diesel engine plant at Manesar near Gurgaon with an annual capacity of 3 lakh engines. "I look forward to 2007 with cautious optimism. There has been strong growth in this fiscal so far. This is a decisive year when many of our new projects go on stream," says Maruti's MD, Jagdish Khattar. The small diesel car segment accounts for 13 per cent of the car market. Expect the fight between Maruti and Tata Motors to be bruising.

-Kushan Mitra

Praj Industries
Betting on Biofuels

On Chaudhari's mind: A Rs 1,000-crore company by 2010

Be it the US or India, venture investor Vinod Khosla is a tough cookie. So, when Khosla, a former partner at Kleiner Perkins, decided to pick up a 10 per cent stake in a little-known Pune-based company, Praj Industries, people sat up to take note. Some years ago, India's stock market bull, Rakesh Jhunjhunwala, had also picked up an identical stake in Praj. What's special about the Rs 267-crore company? To put it simply, ethanol. Praj, promoted by IIT alumnus Pramod Chaudhari, specialises in setting up ethanol machinery and has executed projects across five continents. "We are the only company out of India offering end-to-end solutions in ethanol," says the 57-year-old Chaudhari. Over the last 10 months, Praj has received an equal number of export orders, especially from the US. Chaudhari's target: Make Praj a Rs 1,000-crore company by 2010. If ethanol-blended fuel takes off in the future, Praj will soar in tow.

-Anand Adhikari

Reliance Fresh store in Hyderabad: Just a curtain-raiser

Reliance Retail
The Game Changer

Back in may this year, reliance fresh was just a gleam in the eye of executives at Reliance Retail. By the end of October, they had launched the first store on Hyderabad's Banjara Hills. That's just one reason why Reliance is like an elephant in India's organised retail industry. The other is, of course, the fact that no one else has the kind of investment plans hat Reliance has: Rs 25,000 crore across formats and across categories, ranging from produce to groceries to footwear to consumer durables, and vertically integrated supply chain. In 2007 (and beyond) more of Reliance's retail strategy will unfold, potentially rattling existing players. "The end goal," says Raghu Pillai, President and Chief Executive (Operations and Strategy), Reliance Retail, "is clear and that is to cover across all formats, 100 million sq. ft of retail space and have a topline of Rs 1 lakh crore by 2010-11." Seems patently Reliance.

-E. Kumar Sharma

Shriram Transport Finance
Trucking On All Over

Sridhar: He's hitched his stars to the truck financing business

Financing commercial vehicles isn't a terribly exciting business to be in. Three-fourths of the fleet owners who get their trucks financed own less than five trucks. Most of them are semi-literate, but that's not the only reason why they aren't the easiest of customers to handle. Yet, if private equity investors such as Citi, Newbridge and ChrysCapital have been falling over each other to get a piece of Chennai-based Shriram Transport Finance, it's because the company knows how to make the business throw up oodles of cash. With Rs 9,000 crore in assets, Shriram churns out net interest margins of 9 per cent and logged a net profit of Rs 140 crore last year. And according to a study commissioned by Shriram, the opportunity for truck financing is set to boom. The study estimates a minimum potential demand of Rs 45,000-50,000 crore over the next 10 years. Of that, financing pre-owned trucks less than four years old and trucks between five and 10 years old, segments where Shriram dominates, will account for Rs 40,000 crore. Besides, the firm has also started financing new trucks, where it already has a 10 per cent share. "All the new trucks that are bought will come to us for modernisation funds once they are four years old," says the company's Managing Director R. Sridhar. By March next year, the company will grow assets to Rs 10,500 crore. Moral of the story: Businesses needn't be exciting; they only need to be profitable.

-Nitya Varadarajan

Muthuraman: It's all about synergies

Tata Steel
Now Comes the Tough Part

At Bombay House, the Tata Group headquarters, celebrations over the $8-billion (Rs 36,800 crore) Corus acquisition are long over. B. Muthuraman, Tata Steel's Managing Director, is already hunkering down for hard work next year. "For us, the most important thing is to complete the deal in time (by January 2007) and then being prepared for the synergies to be worked out thereafter," says the man about India Inc.'s biggest overseas acquisition so far. What Tata Steel makes of Corus-a much larger steel manufacturer, but much less efficient than the Indian buyer-will be important not just for the Tatas, but for Indian industry in general. After all, Tata Steel will be raising $6 billion (Rs 27,600 crore) in debt to fund the purchase, and how it handles a downturn-if any comes along-will be keenly watched by analysts and others. "We will be sharing our best practices. There will be operational synergies, market synergies, synergies on logistics management and on so many other areas," says Muthuraman. One way or another, it has all the makings of a B-school case study.

-Ritwik Mukherjee

TransWork
New Worlds to Conquer

Kanwar (R) and his team: Global ambitions

A year ago, transworks, the Aditya Birla group's BPO arm, was just one of the 200-odd BPO companies in India. But on July 3 this year, the Mumbai-headquartered operator changed all that with just one deal when it acquired the Santiago, Chile-based Minacs for $125 million (Rs 558 crore then) and in the process shot up the bpo rankings to #2. From being a company with revenues of Rs 164 crore, TransWorks metamorphosed to a Rs 1,350-crore vendor. "With the acquisition of Minacs, the company (which has more than doubled the headcount to 10,000) operates out of 25 centres spanning North America, Europe and India, and delivering services in 28 languages," says Atul Kanwar, Managing Director, TransWorks. "We will be adding facilities in Canada, India & the Philippines in the near term to deliver an expanded range of services and solutions to our global customers." Translation: watch TransWorks.

-Rahul Sachitanand

Videocon's target: First Thomson (plant above), now Daewoo

Videocon Industries
Raider in a Hurry

When it comes to numbers, Venugopal Dhoot rolls them out faster than TV sets off assembly lines in his factories around the world. "We have set a goal to be a $10 billion (Rs 45,000 crore) company in the next three years (from Rs 18,000 crore today) and by December 2007, the hope is to have a market cap of Rs 25,000 crore (compared to about Rs 11,000 crore at present and Rs 5,000 crore last year)," says the Chairman of Videocon. If not too many today doubt Dhoot's determination, if not numbers, it's because he's won everyone's respect in a spectacular fashion. In August last year, he acquired Thomson's global picture tube business for Rs 1,300 crore and Electrolux Kelvinator India for Rs 400 crore, and is now close to gaining a controlling stake in Korea's debt-ridden Daewoo Electronics in a deal worth Rs 3,300 crore. "The next three months will see some consolidation happening, but that doesn't mean we will go slow on acquisitions," declares Dhoot. "Next year is going to be hectic." Better believe him.

-E. Kumar Sharma

HOW THE 20 COMPANIES TO WATCH IN 2006 HAVE PERFORMED

Air Deccan Has not had it easy. Its IPO in May drew a lukewarm response, forcing it to reduce its price band. On June 30, 2006, reported losses to the tune of Rs 340 crore for a 15-month period, despite which the airline has announced it would offer one lakh tickets for as low as Rs 9. Bilcare In October this year, it acquired DHP, a UK-based clinical trials services provider, for $5 million (Rs 22 crore). The company intends to evolve itself into a life sciences knowledge partner. CavinKare CavinKare is entering the home hygiene market with the launch of Tex, a toilet cleaner, tapping the Rs 100-crore toilet cleaner market. This year, the CavinKare group's turnover is expected to reach Rs 575 crore as against Rs 572 crore in '05-06. Centurion Bank (now Centurion Bank of Punjab) The bank, which completed its merger with Bank of Punjab in September last year, is currently in the news for its merger with Lord Krishna Bank, which has run into some rough weather. DQ Entertainment Plans to raise around $100 million (Rs 450 crore) to help its private equity investors exit and support its major expansion plans. It is also opening new facilities both within and outside the country. Geometric Software In October this year, it acquired the engineering services division of US-based Modern Engineering for close to $32 million (Rs 144 crore), with about $7 million (Rs 31.5 crore) in working capital loan. Just a few days after the acquisition, there were reports that the Godrej Group now wants to sell its stake (18.5 per cent valued at Rs 150 crore) in the company and is looking for potential buyers. GVK's G.V. Sanjay Reddy GVK Biosciences Things are still looking up for a company that was one of the pioneers of bioinformatics in the country. In January, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals outsourced research services to GVK Bio; the deal was reportedly worth $8-10 million (Rs 36-46 crore). Indian Rayon (now Aditya Birla Nuvo) The company has had a good year, especially the last quarter, reporting a nearly 40 per cent jump in profits in the corresponding quarter from the previous fiscal. Maruti Udyog The government looks set to divest its 10.27 per cent stake in the company and is awaiting the Cabinet's nod. The launch of an LPG version of WagonR by Maruti Udyog in July has done wonders for the 'tall boy' multi-activity vehicle, with sales more than doubling. Sales of WagonR Duo touched 13,200 in October, up 116 per cent over the July numbers of 6,100 units. Midas Communication Technologies In June this year, it came out with a new switch that enables faster deployment of cable internet. Called Catius, the new solution is targeted at the local cable operators (LCO) segment. NTPC Is hiring aggressively; plans to hire at least 1,000 people every year for the next three years. NTPC seems on course to add 22,000 MW capacity by 2012. Rico Auto Has benefited from the growing auto story. Like its competitors, Rico Auto is scaling up from producing individual components to making assemblies and systems. Has, however, registered a modest 14 per cent topline growth in Q2 this fiscal with a decline in bottom line (largely attributed to rising aluminium costs). State Bank Of India Was the only large PSU bank to register a fall in its net earnings (its net fell by 2.5 per cent) in Q2. The stock has, however, done well and has risen by about 20 per cent in the last six months. The bank, India's largest, is eyeing a global presence, especially in markets like the West Asia. Symphony Services The $100-million (Rs 450 crore) firm is in an expansion mode; in June this year, it opened a second facility in Bangalore with plans to double capacity in Pune. It may also set up base in China. Symphony has registered 170 per cent compounded annual growth from 2002 to 2005. Tata Steel plant in Jamshedpur Tata Steel After acquiring Anglo-Dutch giant Corus, the company is all set to enter the Fortune 500 list, only the seventh Indian company that would be on the list. The combined entity would have revenues of over $22 billion (Rs 99,000 crore). The company hopes to return to its annual margin of about 30 per cent in the next four to five years. Tejas Networks This leader in next generation optical networking products has acquired $20 million (Rs 90 crore) in new equity financing. It plans to use this money to fund its international expansion plans and for R&D to develop packet-aware optical products. The company is eyeing Rs 250 crore in revenues this fiscal, up from Rs 130 crore during 2005-06. TKML It says it plans to launch a small car in the next two-to-three years and would look at a 10 per cent market share in the segment by 2010. It also plans to set up a second facility with a capacity of 150,000 units in Karnataka near its existing plant in Bidadi, near Bangalore. United Spirits After reaching the US and Europe, UB's Vijay Mallya is all set to enter China and Russia. In September this year, UB acquired France-based wine manufacturing company Bouvet Ladubay, which gave it a strong distribution network to sell its products in the European and American markets, while helping tap the rapidly growing market for wines in India. The company has a 55 per cent share in the IMFL category. Vimta Labs In January this year, the company decided to raise Rs 125 crore to fund the second phase of expansion. The company inaugurated its new facility in March in Hyderabad. WNS When WNS Holdings listed on the NYSE in July 2005 (it raised $224 million), Indian stock markets were in the grip of a downturn after the May-June crash. But the stock has held up and is trading at 50 per cent higher than the price it was listed at. The company soon plans to enter East Europe and does not rule out using part of the money raised for acquisitions.