A very good morning to all of you, and a very warm welcome to the 43rd AGM. On behalf of the Board of Directors, I would like to share my gratitude to all of you for finding the time and joining us in the AGM. I do hope you have had a chance to look through the annual report, which has been circulated in the soft version. Now, to broadly share, basically, we, as you are all aware, the Indian economy demonstrated a great degree of resilience against some of the most unprecedented, massive global challenges that we saw in this year that went by. Thanks to the government CapEx, the private sector consumptions, that, you know, we continue to be among the fastest growing economies in the world.
From a micro perspective, Deepak Fertilisers also faced some unprecedented, I would say, price hikes in all its raw materials, anywhere from 60%-90%. But leveraging on our industry knowledge, our relationship with our customers, we could navigate all of these uncertainties and absorb these price shocks and take us through this, you know, difficult period. And, despite, you know, these kinds of unprecedented challenges, what we saw were a few things from an outside-in perspective and inside-out perspective. From the outside-in perspective, we saw that we have a very beautiful alignment in all our three businesses with the India growth story. Whether it is fertilizers, mining chemicals, or industrial chemicals. And this got validated even during this kind of immensely volatile period, where we also had to enhance our prices substantially in order to pass through the raw materials.
That despite those kinds of price hikes, there was no demand destruction, and that was a very strong validation that our alignment of all the three businesses, India, with India growth story, is a very strong foundation that your company has. From the inside-out perspective, we saw that all the hard work that we had put in, in terms of setting up good systems, SOPs, bringing in competent people, all of that stood the test of time. And despite all these vagaries and volatility, we could sail through with, you know, manufacturing, marketing, driving, you know, through all these challenges. With this, I am very pleased to share with all the shareholders our remarkable financial accomplishment in the year that went by. In FY 2023, we actually achieved historical milestones and the best ever performance in the last 44 years.
Our consolidated revenues, top line, from operations surged by 47%, and we crossed INR 11,000 crore mark. Our net profit recorded an impressive growth of 78%, reaching INR 1,221 crore. Operating EBITDA also saw a significant rise of 60% and touched INR 2,165 crore. Our gross debt to equity stood at approximately 0.71x. So a very, very healthy, very robust financial performance. And all the three business segments, the crop nutrition, industrial chemicals and mining chemicals, demonstrated healthy performance. And the chemical segment in its totality, that is mining chemicals and industrial chemicals, contributed 85% to the profits and also achieved a substantial 40% increase in the total revenue. And the fertilizer business reported an impressive 59% rise in the total revenues.
So given our exceptional and record-breaking performance, I am indeed delighted to share that the board has recommended a dividend of 100% on the face value of INR 10 per share. FY 2023 also was a year of a lot of critical strategic initiatives that bore results, and they are taking us, you know, onto a different level of performance and growth. First and foremost, I will share that we were in a position to commission our world-scale ammonia plant based on the world's best technologies, and with a capacity of 500,000 tons, 5 lakh tons per annum. The most latest energy efficient and low emission technology. Ammonia, as you are all aware, somewhere contributes to almost 85% of our raw material needs for all our three businesses, and so it's a very critical raw material.
By bringing it in the into fold, we've been able to now curtail a variety of, you know, potential volatility that otherwise was emerging when we were looking at basing all our downstream on imported ammonia. Besides, you know, risk mitigating as far as the supply goes, we are also in a position to bring a very strong impact on reducing the carbon footprint by removing the ocean movement of imported ammonia. But much more, we would have had to bring in around 25,000-30,000 road tankers from JNPT to Taloja, and all that pollution is now going to be removed, which would otherwise have been at a human consumption level.
In addition, this initiative is very well aligned with the government's Atmanirbhar self-sufficiency import substitution strategy, and over a ten-year period, we could be contributing almost INR 20,000 crore by way of Atmanirbhar import substitution by this ammonia plant. Further building on to the strengths that we have in the mining chemicals, technical ammonium nitrate space, we have now taken up a project which will add to the capacities of our technical ammonium nitrate with an additional capacity of 2.5 lakh tonnes at an investment of around INR 2,200 crore. Now, with the addition of this, we will almost touch 1,000,000 tonnes of technical ammonium nitrate for the mining sector, and we will start being a part of the global top three as far as ammonium nitrate for the mining sector goes.
The project is in its fast moving project execution stage, and we hope to commission it by second half of FY 2026. Additionally, you would have also read that very recently we have unveiled a brownfield expansion of our nitric acid complex at Dahej, and this expansion includes weak nitric acid with around 300,000 tons capacity and 2 concentrated nitric acid plants with a combined capacity of 150,000 tons. This strategy move is to address the growing demand-supply gap and, of course, leveraging our last three decades, four decades of experience in this field. This also aligns very well with our goal to become Asia's largest in nitric acid post this expansion.
I must share that this growth in the nitric acid business comes on the back of a 20-year supply alliance agreement that we have signed with Aarti Industries for the nitric acid, and this arrangement itself will deliver around INR 8,000 crore of revenue over the 20-year period. Now, what we were seeing was that as each of our businesses now has attained a size, which is, you know, a very respectable size. In order to unleash further in terms of... and make further inroads in terms of the various businesses that we are into, we, the board, have taken a call to have a strategic reorganization, restructuring into now distinct corporate entities, where each corporate entity would house a specific business.
So for that matter, you know, the chemical business will be retained in Deepak Fertilisers, the listed company, and Smartchem, which had two businesses, will now get demerged into Mahadhan Agritech Limited, which will house our crop nutrition business, the fertilizer business, and Deepak Mining Services, which will house our technical ammonium nitrate and ammonia business. With this, what we will be seeing is that from top to bottom, all right from the board level to the lowest officer, all of them will be focused on that specific business need and align the strategies, the working philosophies, the work culture, all to suit that specific sector and industry, which is going to give. That focus is going to give a lot of thrust and speed in terms of the actions that are required in those sectors.
Besides that, we are also seeing that from an outside perspective, it will bring in business-specific investors and strategic investors who are more tuned in to whichever will be the specific sector. And from that perspective also, it will help unwind and unleash the potential of each of these businesses. The process of the demerger is expected to be concluded by the end of Q3 this year. From a larger perspective, we have also this year brought in an online ESG profile platform, where we are sharing a lot of things that we are doing on the ESG front. And this will also be our first year where we are sharing the Business Responsibility and Sustainability Report, which comprehensively covers very critical aspects beyond the pure financial dimensions. And I am also happy to share that our shareholder base has now, you know, is almost touching 200,000.
We are very happy with the growing family. And, you know, almost 20% of our holding is from institutional shareholders. So that has, you know, a very robust kind of a profile. So looking forward, I would like to share that we have taken a strategic path, a truly transformational path for all three of our businesses, where we are looking at now moving from commodity orientation to somewhere specialty orientation, or somewhere bringing in shifting the focus from pure product orientation to somewhere complete holistic solutions. So for instance, in the fertilizer business, from a commodity NPK, the thrust is now going to be on crop specific nutrient baskets, meaning rather than just NPKs, we will be making nutrients specifically for the sugarcane sector, specifically for the cotton growers, specifically for fruits and vegetables in the line.
In the mining sector, instead of just selling technical ammonium nitrate, now we will be bringing in the world's best blasting technologies and helping actually mines to raise the mine productivity levels as a part of a holistic offering. Even in case of industrial chemicals, instead of making commodity nitric acid, we are now making specialty nitric acid for the solar industry or for the steel grade industry, and moving others from commodity to specialty chemicals. Internally, we are also now going to be putting a lot of emphasis on IT and AI-enabled drive and push in improvement in management. Whether it comes to understanding and predicting customer needs or utilizing the algorithms for demand planning or somewhere a complete GPS track, supply chain management, or completely IT-driven sales and operation planning, which will bring in a huge robustness in our systems.
Plus, a complete move towards management controls based on IT dashboards. And lastly, a lot of initiatives in terms of the smart factory, to bringing in more refined controls to make sure that efficiency levels are then, move towards world-scale benchmarks. So with all this put together in terms of the CapEx plans, the strategy, growth strategies, and the thrust in terms of improvement in management, we are looking forward to taking your company to next levels of performance and, of course, you know, continuing to provide attractive yields for all our shareholders. Before I conclude, I would like to thank our valuable customers, business associates, banks and financial institutions, central and state government, and above all, you, our shareholders, for being with us all through the journey.
I would also like to express my sincere gratitude to the entire Deepak Fertilisers management team for helping us deliver these exemplary results despite all the challenges. Last but not the least, I would like to thank all my colleagues on the board for their ever available unscheduled support. My very best wishes to all of you and your families. Thank you. I would now like to request Mr. Deepak Rastogi, our CFO of the company, to share more regular final details of the operations and growth. Thank you.
Yes. Thank you so much. This is my privilege and honor to speak to you at 43rd Annual General Meeting of Deepak Fertilisers. On behalf of the board, I would like to thank all the shareholders for attending the AGM. Now, I will actually move towards the updates, providing the updates and accomplishment of the company for the last fiscal. Next slide, please. Deepak Fertilisers is a listed company, and it operates as you know, in four states, has four manufacturing plants: Taloja, which is in Maharashtra; Dahej, which is in Gujarat; Srikakulam, which is in Andhra Pradesh; and Panipat, which is in Haryana. You can see that, you know, we basically have a very strong position in technical ammonium nitrate, which is the mining of our business. You know, we are basically operate in industrial chemicals as well as crop nutrition business, which is our fertiliser business.
The company supports critical sectors of the economy, which is, you know, fully hooked up with infrastructure, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and agriculture sector. Next slide, please. Well, you know, last fiscal was a remarkable year. We actually had the highest ever profits as well as the revenue. You can see, you know, the revenues have actually grown by 47% versus last year to INR 11,301 crores. The PAT also increased by 78% to INR 1,221 crores versus last year. And this is at the backdrop of the unprecedented volatility, which actually the raw material prices have seen, which actually also pushed up the finished product prices. But we actually saw no change in the demand this year, obviously, and, you know, that was the reason why we were able to deliver this.
Now, to give you some slightly more granular details, the revenue, we have the chemicals business, which basically accounts for almost 57% of the revenues, and the fertilizer business accounts for 43%. From a profitability perspective, the, you know, profits of chemical business actually accounts for 85%, and the fertilizer business accounts for 15% of profitability. We are in a very healthy situation in terms of net debt. We ended our net debt at INR 2,500 crore and with a net debt equity ratio of 0.48 versus, you know, which was 3.35 of the previous year. Next slide, please. So as we transform our company, we have been transitioning from moving from commodity space to specialty.
We have also been taking steps to become a service, you know, overall solution provider as opposed to just the product supplier. The other thing which we are also delivering, you know, consciously doing is that we are actually moving closer to the customer. So we... I'll take an example. For crop nutrition, nutrition business, there we have actually, you know, gone and implemented very high efficiency, differentiated fertilizers, which is integrated under the brand of Smartchem. We have also launched crop nutrition solutions, which are very, very crop specific. So this year we actually launched Boronated Health Groundnut under Croptek, and obviously enhancing the experience of farmers with onion, sugarcane and maize. As far as Smartchem is concerned, we have crossed close to 1.4 million metric tons of sales so far since inception.
When I come to industrial TAN business, which is technical ammonium nitrate business, we have been working closely with the customer, providing them the customized technology solutions and, you know, bringing them the overall holistic, you know, solution to them. Wherein we have actually delivered multiple total cost of ownership, productivity improvement projects for our mining as well as non-mining customers. We have also bagged a large, you know, down-the-hole, which is a value, you know, value increase approach for our customer. And this will be the first in its kind, and we are going to do the end-to-end supply contract, and this is to a private sector coal mining company. As far as the industrial chemicals business is concerned, we are actually going very, very specific to the industry. We are supplying nitric acid, which are specific to the solar grade.
We are also trying to commercialize the steel grade as well as the electronics grade. As we speak, we just launched the pyrogen-free grade for our IPA, which is an pharmaceutical grade, and we have also differentiated by this. We are also differentiating IPA for other usages. We have also completed commercial production, commercial trials for pharma grade DIPE . Next slide, please. So Deepak Fertilisers have more than 40 years of experience and is among the leading manufacturers of industrial chemicals as well as fertilizers. As far as the chemical segment is concerned, we basically had. We have a market share of 40% in TAN business, which basically includes high density ammonium nitrate, low density ammonium nitrate, and AN Melt. We are the only manufacturer of medical grade ammonium nitrate.
We are also the highest manufacturers of nitric acid in Southeast Asia, and we continue to have a leading share in IPA. As far as fertilizer segment is concerned, we have a leadership position in ANP and NP grade in Maharashtra, which is around 12%. And we basically are one of the suppliers, which supply very much crop-specific and innovative products to the customer under the brand name of Croptek, as well as some, you know, Croptek and Smartchem. Next slide, please. So as we, you know, go through the journey of transformation, we have basically taken certain actions during the year since last AGM, and I will talk about each of them. Like we discussed about corporate restructuring, which is nothing but we are trying to emerge our TAN business from the fertilizer business.
What it does is that, you know, it actually helps us unlocking the true potential of each of the business, and it also brings in focused strategy we will be able to deliver, each business would be able to deliver the true potential. The other thing which it will do is that it will bring flexibility. It will also bring independent business opportunities and attract the investors as well as technical partners, which will be helpful, and we think that it would actually add overall value to our shareholders. As far as the commercial production of ammonia is concerned, as you know, that it is predominantly for our, because it's a key intermediate for all four businesses, and we basically wanted to get away from the volatility and the supply chain vagaries, and hence we have invested.
You know, as we basically, and as we commenced our commercial production, the plant has one of the best, technology, which is the state-of-the-art technology. It also consumes, the most, almost 50% less, energy versus... And obviously, it also reduces NOx. As far as the nitric acid is concerned, it is a brownfield expansion. We have just announced that, you know, we will be investing close to INR 1,900 crore. You know, this is predominantly at the backdrop of the growth and bridging the gap for our captive consumption, as well as how the eco- Indian economy will be growing. So, you know, next slide, please. I will just explain, obviously much more of detail. So, you know, as I said, you know, ammonia plant, it is 500,000 metric tons capacity.
It obviously helps us to save forex, and it aligns very well with the India Atmanirbhar story, so that, you know, we are able to generate employment as well as, obviously, it will be for captive consumption. We have also, you know, obviously, and this growth comes from the backward integration because, you know, we will be. You know, most of the currently, we have around 80% of the imports, which we are bought-out ammonia, which was coming in before the plant. And going forward, we will have 100% of captive consumption, plus there will be some surplus which we will be able to share with and sell it outside. So we would serve majority of captive needs and mitigating price volatility and global supply vagaries after this plant coming in.
Next slide, please. So we have invested for nitric acid close to INR 1,950 crore. Obviously, this is on account of the demand-supply gap for DFPCL for WNA. Currently, we see a demand-supply gap of around 140 KT , which will actually increase to almost 330 KT metric tons by 2030. Similarly, for our CNA, you know, we basically the India has a supply gap of close to 85 KT per annum, which will actually increase to 300 KT per annum. So the company would like to leverage its leadership position in CNA segment. The expansion is well aligned with evolving landscape demands from downstream sectors and committed long-term off takes driven by China+1 trend for specialty sector.
So overall, ammonia from its subsidiary, because we will be able to provide sustainable supply of raw material, resulting in, obviously, in a win-win situation for both the parties as well as the ammonia subsidiary, which we basically are going to, you know, the asset is actually sometime in October 2025. Next slide, please. So, you know, from restructuring perspective, what we are doing is that currently the industrial chemical business, the mining chemical business and the CNB business, which is the fertilizer business and the real estate business, are housed under the DFPCL. And we, what we did for that, we have got a subsidiary which is called Smartchem, and now the new name, and we have just got the renaming, which is called Mahadhan Agritech.
This Mahadhan Agritech will have, the mining business will get diverted into a new company, which is Deepak Mining Services. As we speak, we know we are expecting this transaction or NCLT approval to come in Q3 of this year, which is like by December, we are expecting to close this transaction. We expect that this will be, beneficial, obviously, beneficial for our existing shareholders, because it will benefit the continued participation of our growth-oriented businesses operations, and we maintain a renewed focus on growing each business vertical uniquely and strategically. Next slide, please. So as when we are going through our strategy of trans, you know, transformation journey, the critical part to deliver our sustainable results is, you know, we are focusing huge amounts in terms of digitization.
We have actually tried to eradicate most of the manual efforts which we take on a day-to-day basis. So S/4HANA effectively has, you know, integrated all the core business processes. And, you know, effectively, we have created a single source of truth for the company. We are also in the process of adopting Industry 4.0, which is also called a smart factory, which will help us harness the manufacturing value chain, as well as creating operational excellence at our manufacturing plant. Which means that we are collecting the data from the manufacturing plant, doing preventive maintenance, conditioning, modeling, and obviously, you know, all the analysis which goes by.
We are also implementing lot of algorithms to deliver and obviously take estimations for our demand planning, supply chain requirements, and it also helps us to understand what are the needs of the customer, so that we can plan, manage that in advance, and we are ready for the product to supply. We also have a dashboard-based management control system so that the manager does not have to go through the details. He or she would be able to get those details at the click of the button, which comes to him or her on a regular basis. Next slide, please. Our focus is on investor relationships to help foster strong relations with the shareholders. We have also strengthened our relationship and enhanced the community through virtual investors meetings, plant visits, and international roadshows.
Over the past years, we have seen significant growth in our shareholders base, as well as institutional ownerships. The company basically have announced a dividend of INR 10, which is obviously a significant growth versus, you know, previous years. And we have also improved our NSE ranking to 401 as we speak now. The market cap currently of the company is closer to 7,500, you know, closer to almost $1 billion, if I might say. And we have also got the ESG, you know, online platform on the company website, which aims to provide accessible and streamlined ESG information to all the stakeholders. Next slide, please.
So to sum up, we strongly believe that these strategic investments, which are including green field, ammonia, TAN and WNA announcements, will generate not only sustainable shareholder returns in the long run, but also benefit the Indian economy by reducing import dependence and creating local employment. For any unaddressed queries, I would request that you may contact Investor Relationships Cell. Thank you so much.
Thank you, Deepak. Now, as the notice was well in advance circulated, somewhere around tenth of August, I take the notice convening the meeting as read. Now, I advise the company secretary to read the members on the resolutions proposed in the notice of this board meeting.