The Zen Technologies stock has been busting the charts. It has gained over 75 percent in the last seven trading sessions. In the last one month, the stock has been up about 86 percent and is currently trading at around Rs169 on the NSE. The company provides defence training solutions and also provides drones and anti-drones solutions. As recent as September 3, the company bagged a major order worth about Rs 155 crore from the Indian Air Force.

Ashok Atluri, CMD, Zen Technologies, is confident of winning many more orders for both, the drone and simulator verticals. He also said that achieving revenues of Rs 550 crore in the next three years looks easy right now.

For the longest time, the worry for the company was winning orders but now the company is a little secured on that front. In an interview with CNBC-TV18, Atluri said, “The current orderbook position stands at about Rs 400 crores. Export order is about 120 crores and counter drone order is about 100 crores and both have to be executed in the next 12 months or so.”

He further said, “We do expect to have a healthy turnover this year. All of this (orders) will definitely be accounted for by early next year.” He also mentioned that around Rs 270 crores orders would be executed over the next four quarters.

The company’s recent order from the Indian Air Force, saw some competition from foreign players as well. On the drone business potential, Atluri said, “Between sword fighting and guns, guns have a big advantage worldwide. Now, drones are being used in wars and counter-drone systems are the way to neutralise that threat, and Zen has competed against worlds’ bigger players and has won this order against them.”

He further said, “The company won the orders because the price differential was huge, almost 100 percent.”

On exports, he said, “There is huge export potential. We will be going out to the export market; we already have customers worldwide. So for us to get those customers to buy our systems should not be a big challenge.”

Earlier Zen Technologies had mentioned that they would breakeven at Rs 40 crores of revenue for their drone business. When asked about it, Atluri said, “There is not much change in the break-even point. But the margins will be lesser than what we got for the simulators business. However, overall, the growth prospects in drone and counter drones are much more, because it's more frictionless than simulators, so people actually want to buy it. For simulators, the company had to coach but for drones, the customers are actually coming after them.”

“The margin differential between the two is about 15 percent. So, the drones’ gross margins would be around 40-45 percent,” he further explained.

Watch the accompanying video for the entire discussion

(Edited by : Dipika Ghosh)