Laurent Germain, CEO of French engineering conglomerate Egis Group, hasn’t been a frequent visitor to India in the past. But this time when he visited the national capital and reached out to the media to explain the group’s growth plan for its India subsidiary, he underlined in no uncertain terms that his visits to this country would be more frequent in the future. And there are concrete reasons for this. “In terms of employee strength, India is our second biggest market and in revenue, it ranks fourth in our global list. And with the big-ticket infra push from the government here and the planned matching efforts from us, in the next five years we are targeting to double our current size, which we have reached in the last two-and-a-half decades. India is very critical turf for us now,” he emphasised. Egis is known for its expertise in churning out solutions for the mobility and environmental sectors. There are a slew of elements which are shaping the French engineering conglomerate’s bigger designs for India. It is ready with a new modest level capex war chest and has just launched a large-scale global designing centre (only the second outside its home turf). It is looking to bring in inorganic components to its growth story and is keen to expand in fast-growing verticals like water management and supply where opportunities for the private sector are gradually opening up. “Egis India has been a relatively low-lying firm in the past and has mainly been present in roadways or highways consultancy projects. But about three-four years ago, they changed the management here and since then there has been more action. They have a good market reputation and they seem well placed to enhance their footprint here,” says a top executive of a home-grown infrastructure consultancy and management firm which is much larger in size. Going beyond roadways A company presentation endorses the theory that during the greater part of its journey in India (it entered in 1995) it had been focusing on roadways consultancy. But is now diversifying at a fast pace in new verticals like metro railways, water management and supply and even airports. The massive public infrastructure spending in India has opened new avenues for the private sector even in basic areas like water management and along with a clutch of home-grown firms, global majors with technology empowered specialisation in different verticals have queued up for a piece of the expanding pie. “Today, we have a diversified portfolio in India. There are three key verticals of our business which are broadly of the same size. Railways and water contribute nearly one-third each to our business and the remaining comes from roadways, smart city projects, etc,” Germain points out. The company’s current annual revenue level in India is slightly less than €50 million and in its global revenue list (€1.2 billion as registered last year) India, clubbed with APAC, is ranked fourth. “Our home turf, France, is the biggest market with 38 per cent share, followed by other European countries contributing 20 per cent. The Middle-East is a strong turf and contributes to 13 per cent of our business. The rest mainly comes from APAC and India is part of this cluster,” explains the group CEO. In terms of operational verticals, the group earns 75 per cent from consultancy services while the remaining one-fourth comes from operation and maintenance (O&M) projects. And in India too, a similar operational pattern is emerging.