NEW DELHI: As an entrepreneur who has grown through mergers and acquisitions in the auto ancillary space, Vivek Chaand Sehgal has never set a benchmark, and believes that setting such a target will only limit his vision and the rapid growth of his company.

In 2015, Sehgal boldly set a revenue target of $18 billion by 2020 for its flagship company Motherson Sumi Systems Limited (MSSL), and $26 billion for the Samvardhana Motherson Group (SMG). For the record, In FY17, MSSL’s turnover stood at $6.5 billion while SMG clocked a turnover of $9.1 billion.

“Achieving topline is easy, but we want to achieve the target topline with 40% return on capital employed,” said Sehgal, chairman, SMG.

The company has put the building blocks in place to accomplish the stated target, as Sehgal reveals he is on the final leg of completing two acquisitions in the automotive space.

“I am going to give the go-ahead for two new acquisitions. We have a list of companies, and have hired one of the big four consultancies to help us. We have finalised an agreement with one of the target companies,” he said.

The group has a strike rate of “1:20,” i.e., out of 20 companies recommended, the company does due diligence on five before shortlisting one. With over 370 companies spread at 230 locations in 37 countries, 25 joint venture partners and over one lakh people, SMG is India’s largest auto part conglomerate.

Sehgal said his company is also investing in organic growth. “More than 16 plants are expected to be set up in addition to the acquisitions that are in the pipeline,” he said.

Recently, SMG inaugurated its plant in Hungary, which will produce for Daimler and supply components for Audi Q8. The plant in Mexico is also ramping up to make parts for Audi Q5.

“In October 2018, we will open the American plant. We hope these three plants of SMP will add approximately one billion euros to the top line of Motherson by 2019 for organic growth. We have recently inaugurated our Indore plant, and a new plant is coming up in Sanand,” he said.

In its previous five-year plans, the company targeted $1 billion in revenues by 2010 from about Rs 1,029 crore ($200 million) in 2005, and ended up achieving $1.5 billion. In the next five-year plan, they again beat the target set.

The latest five-year plan which concluded in 2015, Motherson Sumi improved its revenue target of $5 billion by $500 million. The company has made five acquisitions in the past five years, aggregating a value of about Rs 1,800 crore.