French firms scout for rail business in India

French firms scout for rail business in India
21 Oct, 2007, 0023 hrs IST,Shantanu Nandan Sharma, TNN

NEW DELHI: At least seven French rail companies with no prior experiences in India, have been scouting for business opportunities in rail transport in the country. The expertise of the companies varies from RFID technology to designing of transportation spaces.

In fact, more and more foreign rail companies are looking at the Indian market as the Indian Railways (IR), which has been sitting on over Rs 30,000 crore profit made during the last two years, may dole out high value contracts to private companies. What has made the Indian market even more lucrative is that cities such as Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad are building metro rail networks.

The French companies which may like to have a grip in the Indian market includes SETEC, a public transport engineering company, BALOGH, which specialises in RFID technology and JST which sells traction transformers. Neu Railways, which has expertise on maintenance for rolling stock and NFM, which manufactures boring machines, are also scouting for business opportunities in the Indian rail market.

A senior representative from NFM said, “We have had no presence in India before. But now, we are looking at new opportunities in the Delhi airport linkage project, Bangalore and Chennai metros, and also in some hydro power projects.”

Among the French rail companies which made an earlier attempt to reach the Indian market include AREP, a transportation space design firm, which lost out to an UK firm in a Delhi metro contract.

Established French railway players like Alstom and Systra are also keen on getting a bigger pie in the rail transport business here. Alstom’s transport head for Asia Pacific Simon Charlesworth told SundayET that he had seen clear policies on the part of the government. “The railway minister is very dynamic, and his clear vision has percolated down to the officials. We have been doing business with the Indian Railways for quite sometime now, but now the policies are very clear. We will have no problem to partner with the Indian Railways in any proposed SPVs,” he said.