Chairman of Aditya Birla group, Kumar Mangalam Birla, 39, took time off to speak about the group's biggest and India Inc's second largest overseas acquisition.

This will be also any Indian companies' biggest North American acquisition. He spoke to Kausik Datta and Dev Chatterjee in an exclusive interview. Excerpts.

So what excites you about this deal?

The fact that Novalis is global leader in aluminium business and number 1 player in many markets, we are quite excited about this deal. We are going to be among top 5 metal company in the world and this would catapult the group into the Fortune 500 league. Besides, this would also take Hindalco among the threshold of the Fortune 500 companies.

When did you get to know that you are the winning bidder?

We got a call at around 1 am in the morning from the CEO and chairman of Novelis about us winning the bid. The Hindalco board earlier met on Saturday evening and we had adjourned the meeting to today (Saturday). Our board approved the acquisition this morning.

You have already met the Fortune 500 target three years in advance. So what would be you aiming at now?

Yes, that's true. We are now in the process of setting new goals and targets for the group and the companies.

Will there be any change in the composition of Novelis board now?

Till then the company is not acquired by us, the board will remain the same. We are also not planning to recast the company's management, which has done a good job in the last few years.

This is the largest acquisition by your group. What role does this acquisition play in transformation of your group?

The group's turnover is now around $ 13 billion and this acquisition would add another $ 10 billion. The group would have taken 10 years to build a company of this size and that would have cost us around $ 12 billion.

With this, we are getting a global footprint in 29 countries and take our employee strength to 100,000. This buy will gel well with Hindalco's low cost production advantage with Novelis reach and high quality R&D and application facilities.

Also, it will help us to generate 45 per cent of revenue from overseas against the existing 30 per cent.

Why you pay such a high premium?

When one is buying a world leader, one has to pay a premium. We think the 15 per cent premium paid by us is quite reasonable.

You had said that telecom and BPO business would add more in group's turnover in the years to come. So what is the change now?