India’s TOP 500 Companies 2021

INDIA’S TOP 500 COMPANIES 2021 151 Experts’ View WABAG has been a consistently growing organization, and our current order book stands at INR 9,584 Cr. As a result, we resorted to fundraising from marquee investors through preferential issue of equity shares to fund our growth plans besides execution of our Hybrid Annuity Model (HAM) Projects. How are you leveraging technology to capture new growth opportunities in your sector? As mentioned earlier, we are a pure- play water technology company in water treatment space. We have three R&D centres at Switzerland, Austria and in Chennai. Most of our patents and R&D initiatives are from Switzerland, which is the most advanced in terms of water technology. WABAG has emerged as a global leader in the field of removal of micropollutants, an extremely technology-intensive field. In Switzerland, which happens to be the first country to pass a legislation mandating removal of micropollutants, WABAG has implemented 7 plants, with a further 12 plants under execution. With some of the advanced economies looking at mandating removal of micropollutants, WABAG is well poised to leverage its technical expertise and execution experience to be a frontrunner. In Oil & Gas sector, WABAG stands out as one of the top companies globally, with tailor made solutions, having executed some of the most challenging projects. WABAG has built World’s 1st Purified Terepthalic Acid (PTA) Effluent Treatment and recovery plant for RIL in Dahej which treats one of the most complex effluents while ensuring resource recovery from Industrial Effluent. Recently, we completed a large-scale ETP for Petronas’ RAPID Complex in Malaysia, which treats 7 streams of complex effluents emanating from the refinery complex. WABAG has been a pioneer in advanced technological solutions across Recycle & Reuse. We built the World’s 1st Direct Potable Reuse (DPR) plant in Windhoek, Namibia two decades ago, which recycles the treated water, to be used as potable water. Global Award Winning Koyambedu TTRO plant, one of the largest Reuse plants in India, recycles the secondary treated water for Industrial Use, thus ensuring Industrial Water Security. Our investment made into digital technologies 7 years ago, through our central Network Operations Control (NOC) room, has become the new normal to monitor and operate the plants now. From the NOC room, even during the lockdown, we were able to remotely monitor and operate the plants, ensuring continuous water supply, and sanitation classified as an essential service during the lockdown. Addressing ESG risks has emerged as one of the key priorities for businesses in recent years. What steps has the company taken to enhance its ESG ratings? Our business fits perfectly into the ESG theme, with our focus being on protecting the environment by ensuring that waste water is treated before it is discharged. We used this opportunity to generate green power from sewage wherein the organic material from the wastewater was converted to biogas and finally to CNG or power. This reduces the carbon footprint and also generates green energy. With our solutions, the industries have become self-sufficient in water by recycling it. This also helps them to get higher ratings in ESG parameters. Till date, we are producing more than 26 million m3 of clean water each day, treating over 30 million m3 of wastewater each day and recycling over 2.5 million m3 of wastewater each day, serving more than 71 million people worldwide. The company has recently bagged some major contracts. What is the company’s growth strategy over the next 3-5 years? As mentioned earlier, we have a very healthy order book of over INR 9,500 Cr, which gives an excellent revenue visibility of 3 years. Hence, our primary focus will be on timely and quality execution. The pace of tendering slowed down in 2020, but in FY22, we foresee the tendering process gaining traction and would further build on our impressive order book. We will selectively target orders that are technologically challenging and complex, which will boost our margins too. Being a technology driven firm, we don’t chase volumes but try to maintain positive cash flows and profitable growth. Going forward, we would focus on digitization in our business besides Innovation, Knowledge, Data and Expertise. This will ensure Virtual Monitoring of our facilities and help us to work remotely. Automation, digitization and AI will help us operate with optimized manpower, helping us enhance the plant performance. Once the market starts normalising we foresee a double digit growth in water sector. We would continue to retain our market leadership with accent on technology. Dun & Bradstreet