'We get at least one order everyday, profitability is rising'

Intense competition in the infrastructure consultancy business adversely affected state-run RITES in FY25.

- Manu Kaushik

This arm of the Indian Railways, which posted net profit of ₹423.7 crore in FY25 on a turnover of ₹2,323.5 crore, is in the process of re-engineered its costs and business model to stay competitive.

Chairman and managing director Rahul Mithal spoke about recent improvement in the consultancy space and what lies ahead for the company, in an interview with Manu Kaushik. Excerpts:

RITES has been aggressive in adding new orders across its key verticals. What's the outlook on your future order book?

There are about 16 consultancy PSUs and a large number of private infrastructure consultancy companies. But RITES has got the unique position because we are covering all areas of infrastructure. We have 13 different verticals, including rail infra, highways, ports, airports, buildings, metro systems, sustainability.

There is a huge infrastructure push as we have been seeing in the last few years across these sectors. We have been able to attain a milestone of becoming a one-order-a-day company. In fact, we achieved that (milestone) last year, and now we are hovering at more than one order per day. That became possible because we are able to get orders across verticals.