Funding the obligations inside an engineering order

I am the chief financial officer of Ilvara Engineering Limited, a fictional Vadodara-based maker of process equipment and builder of industrial projects, listed on the NSE and BSE. In the year to March 2026 we earned revenue of ₹3,140 crore and EBITDA of ₹358 crore. Our Process Equipment division fabricates reactors, columns, heat exchangers and pressure vessels for refineries, fertiliser plants and chemical producers in India and the Gulf. Our Projects division designs and builds bulk material handling systems and effluent treatment plants for steel, cement and port clients. In March 2026 the order book stood at ₹6,850 crore.

A project company earns its margin slowly and spends its cash early. Plate is bought months before a vessel ships, bank guarantees are issued before the first advance arrives, and a fifth of a contract can sit unbilled until a client's own civil works are ready. I learnt this as a young public-sector accountant on a steel-plant site in Odisha, then pricing boiler contracts for a German group's subsidiary in Pune, and then as CFO of a private equity-backed foundry in Kolhapur, before I joined Ilvara in June 2019.

When I arrived, net debt was four times EBITDA, ₹780 crore of finished work sat in contract assets and our banks' limits for guarantees were close to full. The order book looked like strength, and in one sense it was. But every new order drew on the same three scarce things, and nobody was rationing them. My work since then has been to price those draws inside every bid, and to give a promoter-led board a plain account of what each order costs us before the client pays for it.

Current focus

I am preparing the board's decision on a ₹1,400 crore export package for a Gulf refinery, which would occupy about ₹420 crore of our bank limits for five years, roughly a sixth of what we have. Alongside it I am completing a bid-capital model that shows the cash, plate and bank capacity each live tender will consume, so that sales and finance argue over the same numbers.

Conversations I welcome

I am not seeking to leave Ilvara. I would consider one independent directorship at a listed manufacturer outside our sector and supply chain, joining its Audit Committee and, after a year as a member, chairing it if the board wished. I can give about twenty-eight days a year, subject to my own board's consent and a conflicts review. I also accept occasional invitations to speak to finance and audit-committee audiences.