Mr ML Gupta MD of Everest Industries in an interview with CNBC-TV18 spoke about the latest happenings in his company and sector. Here is a verbatim transcript of the exclusive interview with Mr ML Gupta.

Q. We are more interested in your steel division, I understand that it contributes just about 20% to your business, but you are a new entrant into this particular business, tell us how it is shaping up and what kind of revenues are you expecting from that?

A - Steel business, we started in July 2008 and this is the second year we have closed on and the growth has been very good. In the first year, while we did the turnover of INR 90 crore, in the second year, we have closed to INR 120 crore so that is about 33% growth. In the next year that is the current year 2011-2012, we are expecting a turnover of about INR 200 crore from this segment. So this is showing a very good growth. In between there was some slowdown because of the general economic slowdown world over, but things have really changed and we have a very good order book. We hope to do quite well in this segment.

Q. What is the order book currently because if you do see some sort of benefit coming in from the whole revival, what kind of expectations do you have on the order book front?

A - We have order book of almost of INR 120 crore currently which translates into almost six-seven months of our manufacturing capability. So I think that is a very good order book because our time of manufacturing a building and erecting is only three months. So we have good amount of orders and the orders are continuously coming in pipeline. There is a good growth in the infrastructure segment to which we are supplying these buildings.

To read more about the interview please visit www.steelguru.com