Everest climb the peak against all odds, with Haas’ help
Overcoming conservative style of functioning by the then Union government and need to import conventional lathe machines from England has been a success story for New Delhi-based Everest Blowers Pvt Ltd, the company which is into manufacturing of a wide range of industrial blowers. Ever since two young graduates from Delhi Engineering College decided to start the company in 1980, hurdles have been a plenty for them to cross on way to climb the ladder of success. Non-availability of proper machining solutions besides bureaucratic restrictions on importing the same have been a major issue for Mr Yash Pal Kapur and Mr Rajesh Malhotra.
The Beginning
“The day we came out of the college, we decided to start the company and collected all the resources needed for the same. However, little did we know that to manufacture such hi-tech machinery, we will have to face lot many problems. We decided to take up the challenge and after three years of modifications, research and development, we came up with the first prototype of blowers for cement industry. Since we did not have a mother machine to manufacture the blower, we were left in the lurch. Though we knew that we can acquire the machine from England, but there were many restrictions on importing the same as we were not able to get a licence from the government to bring in the machine to the country,” Mr Rajesh Malhotra, the Managing Director of the company, said.
“We needed to spend in dollars which we were not able to. To our good fortune, one of our NRI friends came to our rescue and decided to pump in dollars besides making arrangements to send the machine to India. Based on that we got a licence from the government and we managed to start the actual production of blowers in the year 1984,” Mr Malhotra added.
Company History
The company has been manufacturing Twin Lobe and Tri-Lobe Rotary Air Blowers, Mechanical Vacuum Boosters, Dry Screw Vacuum Pumps, Acoustic Hoods and Industrial Vacuum Systems. This wide range of products and technical expertise gained over the years has enabled the company to serve various segments of industry such as water treatment plants, effluent treatment plants, cement plants, aquaculture farms, chemical & pharmaceutical plants, food processing units, paper plants, vacuum plants and systems and pneumatic conveying systems.
The blowers find use in applications requiring medium pressure air such as aeration in sewage treatment and effluent treatment plants, filter backwash, agitation of electrolyte, pneumatic conveying, regeneration of dryers and molecular sieves, maintaining BOD of water etc. Apart from these standard products, Everest is also into production of various customised products such as Canned Motor Mechanical Vacuum Boosters especially developed for research applications, Helium and CO2 duty blowers for Nuclear Power Corporation, Petrol engine driven aluminium alloy blowers etc.
Shifting the Gears
Asked as to why they decided to go with Haas at the first instance, the managing director said they had many options to choose from while purchasing CNC machines. “We had an option to go for second hand machines at a lower cost, but we decided to go in for a brand new machine to enjoy trouble-free operations even if we had to pay a little extra. This way we placed an initial order of three machines to Haas in 2007 and as on date we are proud owners of 14 Haas VMCs while we have ordered to purchase four more machines in the months to come,” Mr Malhotra said.
Need-based Usage
The prime objective of the company to shift to CNC machines was to bring intangibility, consistency and achieve standards and they were successful in meeting the same. “We are the first company in the entire country to manufacture blowers entirely on CNC machines. From turning to milling operations, we are carrying out everything on these machines and in this process the people from Haas have been our strong supporters. Now that we have learnt quite a bit about the technology, our dependency on Haas support has reduced, but we know that they are always there for us and we are happy for that,” Mr Malhotra said.
He added that as far as maintenance and servicing of the machines is concerned, Haas people have always been cooperative. “We are facing maintenance issues, but these are very minor and whenever we need any support from Haas, they make it a point to address the same on urgent basis so that we do not face any major problem and breakdowns,” he said.
Eye on the Future
Underlining the company’s vision in next 5-10 years, Mr Malhotra said that the company’s vision is to grow almost three times of its present capacity. They are looking for exports since the management feels that they are at par with their counterparts in Germany or England. “We are fit for exports and our aim is to increase our production
and turnover by three times in the next five years of which 30-35 percent should be exports. We have already started getting orders from Saudi Arabia, Middle East nations, Africa, USA etc. and we are confident of maintaining high quality standards. In this endeavour of us, Haas will be our partners since they now know how to handle us as after five years we will be replacing all the existing machines and in this also, Haas has lured us by agreeing to replace the VMCs with new ones. This gives us an edge over others as in my opinion this is an intelligent way of management,” Mr Malhotra concluded.