Friday, August 18, 2006

Kerala can attract major investments: Worbus Capital

Worbus Capital Resources Ltd. has initiated talks with the Kerala Government to study investment areas for international investors. This will range from real estate development to KPO (knowledge processing outsourcing) industry.

Talking to reporters here, George Molakal, international director of Worbus, said Kerala had a huge talent pool and could bring major investments and joint ventures in electronics engineering, engineering design service, knowledge processing, etc. He said the Kerala talent was channelled to other States owing to poor government support to multinationals.

Mr. Molakal said Worbus proposed to set up an office in Kochi soon. It is now working with client NeST, for which it brought about several global alliances. These alliances would bring more than $100 million (Rs. 450 crore) in sales for NeST over the next four years.

Answering a question, Mr. Molakal said foreign investors were looking increasingly towards India after the none-too-pleasant experience in China. About 450 CEOs of American companies would come to Mumbai next month to explore the possibilities of investing here.

Worbus urged the Kerala Government to appoint a strategic investment head with a good team to chalk out a plan for bringing investors. He described the West Bengal Government as pro-investment, even offering concessions in land, power and other infrastructure.

Mr. Molakal said the strategic investment team should ideally be headed by a person who had lived in North America and Europe for a considerable period, so as to understand the cultural requirements of Western companies and the problems of merging them with the culture of Keralites. This initiative would bring in revenues for the State and help in building infrastructure and capabilities for continued future growth.

Worbus intended bringing about Rs. 750 crore investment (gross transaction volumes) to Kerala by 2008. Chairman Michael Lewis and Thomas Mathew, head of the company in North America, were likely to visit Kerala in the second week of September to study the political and economic climate, he said. Mr. Molakal said Worbus had crossed $300 million (Rs.1,200 crore) in gross transaction volume for projects across India. The company looked forward to exceed $ 1 billion in GTV by 2008 in India.

Worbus Capital Resources Ltd is a mergers and acquisition company working globally with offices in the U.S., Canada, Europe, West Asia, India and China.

It works with small to medium enterprises (Rs.10-crore to Rs.2,000-crore companies), analysing current performance and recommending growth strategies through global alliances, joint ventures, and funding the growth requirements through investment funds from institutions, venture capitalists and corporate financing.

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