VSF Projects is a family-run company that has spent three decades reinventing itself - first as an aquaculture business, then as a civil contractor for power plants and highways, and now as the developer of a single, ambitious logistics hub on its own land near one of India’s major ports. When the construction business dried up and left the company with no new orders, management did not chase another contract - it rewrote the company’s very purpose, securing shareholder and government approval to build a Free Trade Warehousing Zone where none existed before. That recurring instinct - use whatever assets and permissions you already hold, pivot hard, and bet on a project that creates its own gravity - is the thread that ties VSF’s past to its present.
Business segments
A single-engine company in transition - one legacy contracting business that has wound down to zero, and one greenfield logistics hub under construction that will define everything that comes next.
1. Free Trade Warehousing Zone: the company’s entire future, under construction
A 133-acre Special Economic Zone beside a major port, being built in phases on land the company already owned - no revenue yet, just a regulatory licence, a site and a steadily growing pile of capital committed to it.
- The land came first - the company owns the entire 53.81-hectare (roughly 133-acre) site at Ankulapaturu Village in Andhra Pradesh, so the project sits on an asset that was already on the balance sheet rather than on land it had to go out and buy.
- A government licence is the entry ticket - in 2022 the Ministry of Commerce & Industry formally notified the site as a Multi-Product Free Trade Warehousing Zone under the SEZ Rules, meaning the company can now operate a customs-notified warehousing zone where goods can be stored, handled and re-exported without attracting domestic duties.
- Location is the business case - the site sits inside the Chennai-Bengaluru Industrial Corridor at the Krishnapatnam Node, putting it directly on the freight artery that connects two of South India’s largest manufacturing and consumption centres to a deep-water port.
- Phased build, funded in layers - the first phase is costed at about Rs. 130 crore, split between promoter equity and debt, while the total project cost across all phases has been pegged at roughly Rs. 670 crore. Capital work in progress on the FTWZ had reached Rs. 20,86,99,891 by March 2024, up from Rs. 1,58,06,771 a year earlier.
- No revenue, no inventory, just preparation - as of FY25 the company had ceased all other activities and was focused entirely on setting up the zone, surviving on interest income from bank deposits while it raised a Rs. 49-crore rights issue and lined up interest-free promoter loans to keep the work moving.
2. Engineering & Construction: the legacy engine that ran out of fuel
A contracting business that once built power plants, roads and irrigation works across India but shrank to zero revenue as orders vanished and receivables turned uncollectible - now dormant, with its people and assets redirected to the FTWZ.
- A project-based contractor across four sectors - the company executed civil and turnkey works for thermal and solar power projects, transportation infrastructure including roads and bridges, water supply and irrigation schemes, and industrial facilities, recognising revenue by the percentage-of-completion method as each job progressed.
- The order book collapsed - by FY21 management was reporting a severe financial crunch and the broadest construction-industry slowdown it had seen, with no new orders coming in and revenue shrinking from one year to the next until it hit zero from operations by FY25.
- Receivables became write-offs - by March 2023 the company had provided for its entire trade-receivable balance, carrying it at a net value of zero, because customers from the contracting days were simply not paying.
- The founder’s know-how is still in the family - the Managing Director brought more than three decades of civil-construction experience to the table, and his son, the Whole-time Director and CFO, had hands-on experience in project execution and technical oversight, so the operational DNA of building large-scale infrastructure carries forward into the FTWZ.
Group structure and partners
A standalone public company with no subsidiaries, no joint ventures and no foreign partners - run by a husband, wife and son who together hold the key executive roles, with half the board made up of independent directors.
- Family-held, publicly listed - the company trades on the BSE in Mumbai, but the Chairman and Managing Director, the Whole-time Director and the Whole-time Director/CFO are all members of the same family, giving the promoters direct control over both strategy and day-to-day operations.
- No corporate web - as of FY25 the company had no subsidiaries, associates or joint ventures, and it is not required to register as a Core Investment Company with the RBI, so the entire FTWZ bet sits inside a single legal entity with no layered holding structure.
- Three board committees for a six-person board - with exactly half the directors being independent, the company maintains an Audit Committee, a Nomination and Remuneration Committee and a Stakeholders Relationship Committee, giving it the formal governance architecture of a listed entity even while it operates as a pre-revenue project developer.