State-owned RailTel Corp. on Friday filed the draft red herring prospectus for its proposed IPO with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Seb), with the government looking to divest stake worth ₹700 crore.
RailTel, a category 1 mini ratna central public sector enterprise, is wholly owned by the government of India and under the administrative control of the ministry of railways. The operations of the company have been funded entirely by internal accruals since 2013 and the company currently enjoys a debt-free status.
RailTel was incorporated in 2000 and provides telecom network and infrastructure services, managed data centre and hosting services and system integration services to government and non-government customers, and aims to modernize the existing telecom system for train control, operations and safety, besides creating a nationwide broadband and multimedia network by laying optical fibre cable along the railway tracks.
It serves as a key network for the Indian Railways and has been executing projects of national importance such as National Knowledge Network (NKN) and Bharat Net.
As of 30 June, its optic fibre network covers over 55,000km and 5,677 railway stations across the country.
On Thursday, the ₹444 crore public offer of Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders Ltd was subscribed 157 times, a record for a public sector company. The previous best IPO from the public sector companies was from Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corp. The ₹645-crore IRCTC IPO was subscribed almost 112 times last year in October.
