Digital India spurs Tejas Networks IPO

By Nandita Singh

BENGALURU: India’s homegrown technology product company, Bengaluru-headquartered Tejas Networks is set to raise Rs 450 crore via its initial public offer (IPO) that opens tomorrow, June 14, 2017.

The offer includes sale of 12,711,605 equity shares along with fresh issue of equity shares and closes on June 16, Friday.

The price band for the offer is fixed from Rs 250 to Rs 257 per equity share with a face value of Rs 10. Bids can be made for a minimum of 55 equity shares and in multiples of 55 thereafter. Its shares will get listed on BSE and NSE, the stock exchanges of India.

Seventeen years after it was founded in the year 2000, Tejas Networks – an optical and data networking products company – has weathered the competitive landscape of optical transmission business. The company has put together technology blocks of intellectual capital that now form its leverage in the fight for market share with industry Goliaths such as Huawei and Cisco.

Tejas has to its credit over 330 patent filings across globe. It has an R&D staff of 500, of which 400 are involved in software R&D. It is indicative of its software defined hardware focus, which will be key in the upcoming data heavy, IoT era with intelligence everywhere.

The company is looking to ride pent up demand in the optical transmission space, given that barely 20 percent of base stations in India currently have optic fibre connectivity. “We are at an inflection point,” said Sanjay Nayak, CEO & MD of Tejas Networks. He was addressing the media in India’s Silicon Valley Bengaluru, well-known for its global technology services companies such as Infosys.

Tejas Networks has similar ambition in the product space. The company already sells to 60 markets globally and has in place a strategic focus on emerging markets of South East Asia, Africa and Latin America along with India.

“It is the customer wins and track record in India that is giving us, as well as potential customers in other emerging markets, the confidence to go with Tejas,” said Nayak explaining that there is huge demand riding on the back of Digital India and similar digital transformation programs in other emerging economies. .

Tejas customer list includes India’s public sector units such as Railtel, PGCIL, BBNL and top telcos such as Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular and Tata Communications.

Underserved emerging markets in Asia, Africa and Latin America approximately constitute half of the $16 billion optical transmission global market and is estimated to be growing 6 percent year-on-year.