Sharda Motors looks for equity investor

Chennai, Feb 11 (IANS) Auto component vendor Sharda Motor Industries Ltd is planning to raise equity funds for its future plans and is also exploring overseas market for its off-the-highway vehicle exhaust systems, said a senior company official.

"We are holding discussions for raising equity funds for our expansion plans. We are open for private placement. Currently the company's equity stands at around Rs.9 crore," managing director Ajay Relan told IANS here.

He said the promoter's holding currently at 82 percent will be brought down.

Meanwhile the company is now looking at overseas earthmoving equipment makers for its exhaust systems.

"We are now focusing on export market and the new research and development (R&D) centre here will be towards that. We are now supplying to BEML and John Deere," research and development (R&D) head Sivanandi Rajadurai told IANS.

He said the company has set up the R&D centre near here at an outlay of Rs.30 crore and has 32 engineers.

The centre would provide customer support in product development, emission and noise control technologies.

The new R&D centre will also be involved in modelling and simulation tools to design and optimise exhaust components and full system.

"We also have engineers looking at R&D at all our 13 plants," Relan added.

He said the company's two upcoming plants at Pune and Gurgaon would be completed soon and the total investment in them is around Rs.100 crore.

Queried on consolidating the manufacturing operations in few locations to derive economies of production, Relan said: "The exhaust systems are long and bulky and would involve huge freight cost. Further vehicle manufacturers want their vendors to be near the plant."