Surviving Debt

In the middle of this year, July 7 to be precise, GVK achieved financial closure for the Navi Mumbai airport project. This is the first new venture it is taking up after a gap of three years, the last being its Rs 5,000 crore Goindwal Sahib thermal power project, which went onstream in April 2016.

The apparent reason: The company wanted to focus on debt reduction. "Debt reduction is top priority for us and we are working towards reducing it substantially in the next four to five years," G.V. Krishna Reddy, the Founder and Chairman of the GVK group, had said early in the year. When BT met him a few months ago and asked him the way ahead, he said, "Every day, I spend at least one hour reviewing this (steps to cut down debt)." Senior company executives see no change in this focus even today.

These efforts are driven by an understanding that overleveraging limits