L&T market capitalisation to touch Rs 3 lakh crore in five years: AM Naik

New Delhi: Larsen & Toubro's standalone market capitalisation (mcap) will touch Rs 3 lakh crore and revenue will reach Rs 2 lakh crore in five years as strategic initiatives like L&T NxT have helped in making giant strides, Group Chairman AM Naik said.

The recently launched L&T-NxT initiative is a technology platform that focusses on artificial intelligence, internet of things (IoT), virtual reality, augmented reality, geospatial solutions as well as cybersecurity.

The USD 20 billion diversified L&T Group has a market cap of about Rs 2.5 lakh crore at present.

"Five years from now, I expect L&T standalone market cap to be in the range of Rs 3 lakh crore from the present about Rs 2 lakh crore... L&T's revenue will then touch Rs 2 lakh crore from the present about Rs 1.4 lakh crore," Naik told in an exclusive interview.

According to him, when he took over as L&T CEO, the combined market cap was around Rs 2,000 crore and it has now surged to Rs 2.5 lakh crore.

He joined L&T in 1965 as a junior engineer and rose to the positions of CEO and MD in 1999 and chairman in 2003. In 2017, he stepped aside from executive responsibilities and took over as Group Chairman.

"It has grown so much. The sales were about Rs 5,000 crore (when he took over) and today it is Rs 1.4 lakh crore."

"I would say 88 per cent of today's L&T has been created by me from the clean slate. What we inherited, no longer exist today and in a year or two, it (share of the inherited businesses) will come down from 12 per cent to 2-3 per cent. Remaining we would have closed or sold," he said.

Naik narrated how he aspired to be a manager in L&T and retire when he would get Rs 1,000 salary.

"I used to say I will become a manager one day and will get a four figure salary of Rs 1,000, which I received in 1966 itself, purely out of sheer hard work and a lot of innovative things I did.

"This went on...I gave stock options to all employees in 1999 and fortunately the stock went up...perhaps it is a record... it moved up 1,800 times which made almost 2,500 L&T employees millionaires and some even multi-millionaires," he said.

Naik said since then the stock options have become worth a lot of wealth and he has been consistently giving away the same for charity, education and health.

He said, once he aspired to work with L&T which only recruited from IITs but he was not an IITian.

"Finally I was called for interview in November 1964 and joined L&T in March 1965. Now it is my 55th year with L&T...I have always worked 16 hours a day, 7 days a week," he said.

Naik said L&T- NxT has been his brainchild and has propelled the company further on growth path and it is set for giant strides.

"Through L&T-NxT I hope we will do better and do great things. ... in IT and engineering service, once we complete our acquisition of Mindtree, we will be a USD 3 billion company and our idea is in three to four years, we will take it to USD 5 billion," he said.

"It was zero when I took over....application of new generation of technologies is now a major focus for us with L&T-NxT and I hope we will do a great job in this area."

The infrastructure major has taken its shareholding in IT services firm Mindtree to 26.53 per cent.

L&T is a major technology, engineering, construction, manufacturing and financial services conglomerate with global operations.