Larsen and Toubro, India's biggest engineering conglomerate is targeting overseas revenue growth as part of a strategy to beat a slowdown in Asia's third-largest economy.

L&T last month slashed its order growth guidance for the financial year to March, as it warned of project deferrals and sluggish investor appetite in India thanks to high interest rates and a gloomy economic outlook.

Mr R Shankar Raman CFO of L&T told an Investment Summit in Mumbai that "It's essentially an India de-risking strategy, we was targeting 15 to 20% of revenue to come from overseas markets, compared with 10 to 12% last year.

Mr Raman said that "We will try to expand in the international market. Today our international business is largely in the Middle East, but hopefully in passing years the Far East will start giving more orders."

Mr Raman said that "The Far East, some areas of Africa and South America have some interest for our products. We have just opened up a few offices.”

L&T, with a market capitalization of USD 15 billion, has aggressively targeted overseas projects in recent months and has announced since August USD 1.1 billion in new foreign contracts, mainly for hydrocarbon firms in the Gulf region. The firm secured a USD 250 million contract to build a pipeline for Thailand's top oil and gas explorer PPT Exploration and Production Plc in August.

(Sourced from ET)