Alpha Design Technologies Plans To Raise Rs 500 Crore Through IPO

Bengaluru-based defence equipment maker Alpha Design Technologies plans to go public in 1 year from now to raise Rs 500 crore from the market, Colonel HS Shankar, chairman and MD of the company said without divulging further details on the planned IPO.

The company’s turnover in the last fiscal was Rs 402 crore and it expects to touch Rs 450 crore in the current fiscal ended March 31, 2017. Shankar said Alpha Design is well positioned to grow in “geometric progression” and touch Rs 2,500-3,000 crore in turnover in the next 3 years. The company reported a profit of about Rs 32.2 crore or 8 per cent of the turnover during the last fiscal.
Alpha Design typically spends over 20 per cent of its sales in research and development (R&D). It has about 650 engineers out of which 450 are dedicated to R&D.

Last fiscal, the company’s turnover from exports (primarily to Israel and Germany) stood at Rs 332 crore led by large deals in the thermal imaging systems. This fiscal, exports is expected to contribute 60 per cent of the total sales, Shankar said. The company also plans to expand by building dedicated export-oriented facilities across different locations in Bengaluru.

The company today also announced that it has won a multi-million dollar contract from Israel-based Elbit Systems for the manufacturing of 600 VHF (very high frequency) communication devices for exports and subsequently for large-scale manufacture to cater to the requirements of the country’s armed forces.

The Bengaluru-based company is also working on visionary technologies such as military software-defined radios (SDRs) for handheld, manpack, and vehicular applications. “SDRs will be launched in the market in 1-2 years and we are working ahead of time,” senior company officials said.

Alpha Design claims to have supplied defence electronics equipment worth $100 million in the past 5 years and hold a confirmed order book of more than $250 million for the next 3 years.