Innovation should be the way of life for Indian manufacturers

By Niraj M Wanikar, Chief Editor, CNCTimes.com, 2015-02-20 17:30:57

Precihole Machine Tools, the leaders in providing deep hole drilling solutions, is the company that Inspires, Innovates and Delivers state-of-the-art machine tools and special purpose machines. It also provides precision machining and component manufacturing services for the engineering industry. The Thane-based company has valued customers in the defence, automotive, aerospace, oil and gas exploration, steel tube, medical equipment, textile, machinery & machine tools, heavy engineering and general engineering industries.

Speaking to CNCTimes at IMTEX 2015, the company’s Director (Sales and Business Development) Mr Parag Kulkarni said, “If you stop innovating then you will die. Innovation should be way of life for Indian machine tool manufacturers if they want to compete with the global players. I wish Indian manufacturers look at the global market and try to acquire the technology. As per my records, India is currently 12th in the world as far as manufacturing industry is concerned and I hope that collectively we improve our rating and be among top five in the world. Right now there are just 2-3 companies who are giving a tough competition to European, American and Japanese machine tool manufacturers. If 10-15 companies come into this league, then the scenario will be totally different.”

“Big companies have attained this position not only because of the brand but the quality of machines they manufacture. Can Indians not achieve it? Surely we can, it’s just that we need to look at the requirements of the users and manufacture machines that suits global needs. We just have to change our mindset and everything else will fall in place. I would love to be in a situation where I am competing with another Indian brand that too on a global platform,” Mr Kulkarni added.

Precihole was formed by three tech-savvy gentlemen—Mr VR Nayak, Mr Anil Kulkarni and Mr Ayaz Qazi in the year 1988 to design, manufacture and market special purpose machines (SPMs) with focus on deep hole drilling machines. It has so far manufactured nearly 1000 and installed 700 machines without any failures. This shows the company’s thrust on maintaining quality and precision of the machines. “Around six years ago we visualised ourselves differently with a global perspective. So we set up distributors and channel partners in US, Europe, Mid-East and South East Asia with a target on defence, oil and gas, die mold, aerospace, process engineering, heavy engineering, automotive, medical implants etc. Since we addressed pain areas of the customers, we received an excellent feedback from the market,” Mr Kulkarni said.

He added that the company has always appointed those distributors who have a good local presence as we believe in providing prompt service to our customers. “We only appoint companies having strong local presence as our channel partners so that we can cater to the customers in a trouble-free way. Almost 85% of our sales are direct while the rest are through channel partners. Since our machines are precise and also cost effective, we are looking at doubling our turnover in the next fiscal and maintain a steady growth rate of 25-30% every year,” he said adding the company is also looking at exporting the sports guns that it manufactures for shooters in the sporting industry.

On the current market scenario, Mr Kulkarni said the last year was quite difficult but Precihole managed to maintain the turnover in 2013-14 compared to what it registered in 2012-13. “The market is slowly picking up and last few months were really good. Since the automotive, die mould and other industries are doing good, we are getting exciting leads and the order closure rate is also good. Actually, we got good export orders last year and this helped us in keeping up with the turnover in FY14 as that of in FY13. I think the market will witness an upswing soon and I have full faith in Indian manufacturing industry,” he said.

“Since Indians are very price conscious, it gets difficult for us as we manufacture machines suited for US and Europe and the same machines are made available in India. The price module in the world is different than the one in India so we face stiff competition here. Nonetheless we have formulated a strategy to address price factor this year and we will modulate it without compromising on quality,” Mr Kulkarni said adding Precihole has launched four spindle gun drilling machine for automotive and process engineering industries.

About expectation from IMTEX, he said that the company participated in the expo just to create brand awareness and make people aware about who we are and what we do. “If anyone thinks about deep hole drilling then they should think of us. This is the message we want to send to the market. Also, the crowd at IMTEX is genuine and we wanted to tell them that we are here for all their deep hole drilling solutions. Last but not least is to educate people about deep hole drilling since it’s a niche area and inform them as to how the process can be done with a speed,” Mr Kulkarni concluded.

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