'We Are Going Digital'

BW | Businessworld’s Brij Pahwa spoke to Anoop Kumar Mittal, chairman and managing director, NBCC, on the company’s latest initiatives and future plans. Excerpts:

Your company has three segments, namely project management consultancy, real estate and EPC contracting. Which of these is the leading segment?
Presently, project management consultancy is the segment from where we generate 80 per cent of our revenue. Our flagship development programme which is the redevelopment of old property also falls under this. There is no doubt that PMC generates maximum revenue and profit for us.

Apart from the New Moti Bagh Project, what are the other large scale projects you are working on?
As far as the redevelopment segment is concerned, after Moti Bagh we have started the Kidwai Nagar project which is a billion dollar project. Besides, three more government colonies have been approved namely Netaji Nagar, Nairoji Nagar and Sarojni Nagar. Total project size is Rs 30,000 crore. In addition, the Rajasthan government has tied up with us in a joint venture while the Orissa government has also given us two projects.

Tell us about NBCC’s new vertical of redevelopment of heritage buildings.
In the last three years we have started renovation and retrofitting of heritage buildings which started with the Indian Museum in Calcutta. After that we redeveloped the Victoria Memorial. The third project is the redevelopment of Gulshan Mahal in Mumbai.

What is NBCC doing as part of its digital initiative and how does it plan to make redressal mechanisms more user friendly?
Yes, we are going digital. For starters, we are providing smart city projects with digital solutions. For the same, we have tied up with IBM. Inside the company too, everything is now going digital and our aim is to digitise the entire office in a year and make it paperless.

Tell us about your venture into the e-commerce sector?
It all started last year when the government initiated a plan for houses for everyone by 2022. In tandem with the same, we had a round of discussion with the government on starting an ecommerce housing segment to fulfill the latter’s aim of providing houses to everyone. We are planning to launch the same at an apt time.

You have forayed overseas as well. What are the projects that you are planning abroad?
Right now we are operating in four countries namely, Botswana, Maldives, Oman and Malaysia while we are planning to expand our wings in Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries as well. We will be initiating some projects with them shortly.