Offbeat Road-Builders

Dilip Buildcon’s success has come on the back of executing projects outside its home state and sticking to EPC projects

- Krishna Gopalan

A remark made by his mother when he was barely a teenager still brings a smile to Dilip Suryavanshi’s face. His father was in the police department and the family had to undergo the torture of him being transferred almost every other year. The challenge of getting the children into new schools and adjusting to a new environment meant Suryavanshi’s mother eventually ran out of patience. “Khud, kuch karo,” Janaki Devi would often snap in frustration. “I don’t think she advised me to start my own business but that’s what I ended up doing. There was no joy in working for someone,” says the 61-year-old, who today is the chairman and managing director of Bhopal-based Dilip Buildcon.

The company has stuck to its core business of EPC (engineering, procurement and construction) road development steadfastly and it is a decision that has paid off . From the time it was incorporated in 1987 , it has laid 15,000 kilometres of roads in India, with 8,000 km having been completed in just the past five years. The order book at the end of the third quarter of FY18 stood at #15,500 crore and with some big wins in March, it is expected to close the year at #28,000 crore, or 4x FY18 projected revenue.

That has reflected in the way the stock price, too, has moved. After listing in August 2016 at #219, it quotes at #1,150 today. Naval Totla, managing director of BanyanTree Finance, a private equity fund, that invested in Dilip Buildcon in 2012, says the management marries the right combination of caution and aggression. “Sticking to road construction was a smart thing to do. They have got better at it and improved their execution capabilities, which has resulted in taking on larger projects successfully,” he says. This has gone a long way in Dilip Buildcon’s revenue increasing from #233 crore in FY10 to #5,320 crore in FY17. For 9MFY18, standalone revenue was #5,190 crore.