Hyderabad: Telecom gear maker HFCL plans to invest Rs 950 crore to enhance optical fibre cable production capacity over a period of next two years, a top official of the company said on Wednesday.
While announcing the launch of the HFCL's data centre solution portfolio, OptiQ AI, its managing director Mahendra Nahata said that there is a huge demand for optical fibre cables in the data centre segment, especially in the US, which is driving growth for the industry.
"We are expanding our capacities for manufacturing fibre, fibre optic cable, as well as integration, backward integration in terms of manufacturing of free forms, which is the main raw material for manufacturing fibre. Total capex will be about Rs 950 crore, which will be spent in the next two years," Nahata said.
He said that the total capex includes about Rs 580 crore for preform, a cylindrical glass rod that is a basic raw material to manufacture optical fibres.
"Fibre optic cable capacity is increasing from 39 to 45 million fibre kilometres per year. We will increase optical fibre capacity to 40 million fibre-route kilometres (rkm) from 30 million rkm per year. Then we are going to do backward integration by manufacturing preforms, which are the main raw material for manufacturing fibre. That facility is going to cost us around Rs 580 crore," Nahata said.
HFCL recorded the highest-ever order book of Rs 21,206 crore in FY26, more than double the Rs 9,967 crore in FY25.
The company's optical fibre cable (OFC) business also recorded the highest-ever order book of Rs 13,483 crore in the last fiscal. Nahata said the company is aspiring to capture 10 per cent market share in the global optical fibre cable segment in the next 2-3 years.
"The major reason for the demand increase in optical fibre cable is the mushrooming of data centres, but behind data centres is artificial intelligence, which has really created so much data that, for storing the data, you need data centres; for carrying the data, you need fibre optic cable. Some demand increase has happened because of the defence sector also, where people are using fibre optic based drones instead of radio controlled drones to have better sustainability and no interception by radio jamming, etc.," he said.
The top executive added that the company has partnered with IIT Delhi to develop a hollow optical fibre cable and an optical fibre cable packed with 14,000 fibres.
"Traditional telcos used to use only something like a maximum of 288 fibre in a cable, but data centres are today using 7,000 fibre cables. We will be able to design a hollow core and 13,000 optical fibre-based multicore cable in 2 years. Hollow core will deliver around 35 per cent faster speed than multicore cable, but its commercialisation will take some time. Multicore cable is in demand every day," Nahata said.
He said the company's defence portfolio is expected to begin contributing to the consolidated revenue from the first quarter of the next fiscal.
