Business

'Our Goal Is To Offer Relevant, Reliable, Superior Products & Services To Our Customers'

Simple but reliable, superior in quality but affordable, technologically advanced but user-friendly – this has been the objective of all R&D at Autotex Group. In an exclusive interview with Reena Mital, M.R. Ramanujam, Managing Director, and Vishnu Vardhan R., Executive Director, Autotex Pvt. Ltd. talk about their achievements and future goals. Autotex is the only OEM supplier of bobbin holders in the global market. How did you achieve this? I established Autotex in 1989. By 1992 we had begun supplying bobbin holders to OEMs starting with LMW, then Rieter, and then to various others including Saurer (then Zinser), Marzoli, KTTM, and to some Chinese companies too. So when I started, I realised there is a gap, and a huge opportunity in the market. If you wanted a reliable, superior product, you had to import from Japan, Korea, and pay a premium. Otherwise, you would have to settle for very low quality, unreliable product at very cheap rates from China, India, etc. There was no manufacturer of good and reliable quality bobbin holders, offering value for money. We decided to offer value for money product with very high reliability, quality, consistency, service – which was missing in early 1990s. So we focussed on all this. And automatically customers came to us. What did you do differently to achieve this level of technology? There were 4-5 different models and mechanisms available in the market at that time. With my technical education and textile experience, I knew the pros and cons of each product. This helped me to develop my own products. These were much appreciated by the customers. At that time, the life of a bobbin holder was of 2-4 years, after which it had to be replaced. From day 1, Autotex claimed to offer bobbin holders that would operate efficiently for more than eight years. And some mills were able to use those bobbin holders for 12-15 years. In other products too the focus is on offering value, meeting current and anticipated customer requirements. We keep bringing in some of our own innovations. For instance, Auto Clean was developed to automate the cleaning of clearer rollers. This has helped mills to save on manpower, costs, and improve yarn quality. We have patents for a lot of products that we have developed, we keep innovating lot of mechanisms, and bringing what is best for customers. That is our specialty. We are constantly looking to add more products. Bobbin transporting system is a new area where spinning mills are investing. Basically, mills want to automate processes as much as possible, and that is what we want to focus on. What is the mindset of the industry towards Indian made textile engineering products? I can confidently say that at Autotex, we can develop better products than our international competitors. The proof of this is that we are global leaders in bobbin holders, and enjoy majority share in many other products. Unfortunately, the customer still has a mindset that Indian technology is not as good as European or Japanese. True, European and Japanese companies focus a lot on new developments, R&D, innovation, creating new technology for the industry. So they take the lead. But in the case of Autotex, in some instances, our innovations and developments have been incorporated by international competitors in their products. What is your message to the Indian textile engineering industry? We have some gems in the Indian textile engineering industry. We have achieved this success by dedicated focus on real R&D. Our experience, dedication to understand the role of the product, what the customer wants, and bringing those solution into the product, that has led to our success. Cost and quality wise we are better than others. At Autotex, our goal is to keep innovating, and stay relevant to the market and the fast changing trends.