The Top 10: Rank 9: HTL

The
reincarnated Hindustan Teleprinters Ltd (HTL) has been consolidating its
manufacturing position each year. Emerging as the second largest telecom
manufacturer in the country behind ITI has seen its production and sales growth
increase continuously. During the year under review, HTL registered 29 percent
growth in its sales performance with total sales revenues of Rs 464.36 crore. In
1998-99, its total revenues were Rs 360 crore.

While maintaining the growth in revenues, its production also
increased. Its production of switching equipment grew from 8.3 lakh lines in
1998-99 to 14.142 lakh in 1999-00. While the EWSD large digital switching
exchanges went up to 9.49 lakh lines, C-DOT switching exchanges crossed 4.5 lakh
lines. In revenue terms, the figure for the entire range of switches was Rs
356.40 crore with the EWSD switches accounting for Rs 190 crore and C-DOT
contributing Rs 157 crore.

Though switching accounts for the largest chunk of its
revenues, it has more than 55 products to give additional revenues. The
mechanical products segment consisting of Main Distribution Frame (MDF), which
is an important adjunct of the exchange equipment, supplied over 22 lakh
equivalent lines to garner about Rs 74 crore.

A major thrust area for the company was in new technologies
like Managed Leased-line Data Network (MLDN), digital cross connects, and
Digital Loop Carrier (DLC) systems, etc., and it has earned it remarkable
revenues. As a result, its transmission and data and access products fetched it
total revenues of Rs 33.82 crore. Additional revenues of Rs 50 crore came in
from the Internet products area and SDH.

The significant progress for HTL is primarily because of its
ability to diversify its product portfolio. HTL is able to do that so quickly
because of its focussed in-house R&D activities. That is also the prime
reason why, in spite of being completely dependent on DoT orders for switching,
it has been able to add on additional revenues. It came up with new versions of
C-DOT exchanges–SM XL and MAX XL–and prototype models for CCTTT #7
signalling, ISDN, and IN solution based on C-DOT design. A proto-type for 2 Mbps
HDSL is ready. It is also working towards HDSL range of products that would
enable the use of the same pair of wire for 15-30 subscribers, against the
present norm of "one pair, one subscriber". It has also been doing
major work on the data modems. While it has got the type approval for 33.6 Kbps
modems, it has developed 56 Kbps modem as well.

Like most government-owned companies, the biggest reason for the sluggishness
is the huge size of the workforce. Though it has been able to prune that to
1,000, it is still a challenging proposition for the company. And the other
biggest challenge is that it is purely DoT-oriented. In spite of the emerging
non-DoT market and diverse products, it lacks aggressive marketing. If it is
able to restructure to that mould, there is no reason why it cannot grow further
high. And especially when it expanded its product ranges to the PMP radios, SDH
and WILL areas. It is also actively working on HDSL, Digital Circuit
Multiplication (DCM) equipment, and ADSL products. These products, it hopes,
will take off during the current year. With these aggressive product lines it
expects to cross the Rs 600 crore mark this fiscal.