Confirming this, HCC chairman and managing director Ajit Gulabchand said: "We are bidding for infrastructure projects aggressively through joint ventures. The partners complement us and enable us to qualify for many large projects, besides of course sharing risk." The aggression seems to be paying off. Against a turnover of Rs 375.63 crore last year, the company will touch over Rs 600 crore in the current year. As the joint ventures are project specific, it will allow HCC to pick the best partner for each project, saidGulabchand.

HCC has tied up with Samsung Corporation, Korea, for a Rs-1,000 crore hydroelectric project at Dholiganga in Uttar Pradesh. HCC has a 45:54 joint venture with Italy's Impriglio for the Rs 700-crore Naphtha Jhakri hydroelectric power project.

For the road sector, the company has entered into a joint venture with Hyundai Construction and Engineering for the Rs 220-crore cable-stayed bridge across the Yamuna in Allahbad. Hyundai is a $4 billion turnover company. With this, HCC will acquire access to the cable-stayed technology used for long-span bridges.

In the road sector, the company has entered into a joint venture with Pati Berhad, a Malaysian-based construction giant that has excuted several projects in south-east Asia. According to HCC executive director MD Khattar, the venture with Pati will be primarily for road projects in Gujarat.

The joint venture has prequalified for six state highways projects. HCC is relatively new in the road sector. It has executed one stretch of theMumbai-Pune expressway, estimated at Rs 200 crore. Despite a year of leg-work, HCC had no success on the Ahmedabad-Vadodra expressway.

With private ports expected to spring up along the coastline, the sector has enormous potential for construction companies. To gain expertise in the area, HCC has tied up with Clough Engineering of Australia for the Rs 300-crore marine terminal at Jawahar Deep at Mumbai. The venture has prequalified for the marine terminal, to be used exclusively for handling POL.

HCC is executing a Rs 230-crore project to construct breakwaters for the Ennore Port, Chennai, where it has an 80:20 joint venture with Van Oord ACZ. The latter is a specialist in marine works. In water supply, HCC, in a tie up with Bechtel, is the EPC contractor for the bulk water-supply project in Tirupur where water will be drawn from the Kaveri river and carried to a storage 56 km away. The Rs 400-crore project is the first water-supply project for HCC.

Despite the large business that the company hasgarnered this year, it has steered clear of coming in as a developer of infrastructure projects. According to Gulabchand, the company is undercapitalised and cannot take on the kind of risks associated with these projects. He is, however, looking at the financial structure that will enable it to do larger projects.