Attaining New Heights [Nov 2011]

November 25, 2011 7:13 am

Attaining New HeightsKTR India, a one stop solutions provider in couplings technology has crossed 2010 turnover in Sept 2011 itself. Against 25 per cent growth in 2010, the company aims to achieve over 36 per cent growth in 2011. An interview with Kumar Karandikar, Manager Sales, KTR IndiaWith more than 50 years of experience in power transmission solution business having 20 subsidiaries throughout the world, what keeps KTR going?We at KTR, with a strong and proven technical expertise and capacity to develop solutions, have always upgraded our product bouquet to cope up the rising qualitative demands with the upgrading technology in the industry. With this, the product quality is constantly improving and we are always one step ahead than the market demands, giving us an edge over other players in the industry.
How has your journey been so far in India?KTR India’s growth is really remarkable since last couple of years. With more and more efforts on sales and increasing our presence in Indian market, we grabbed many opportunities. Many esteemed customers are approaching us on their own to develop the business relations with KTR as a solution provider.  In a few cases, where we have been able to provide complete technical solutions and resolve on-going issues in power transmission, we are able to create raving customers.
What is your opinion on the recent status on your areas of business?KTR as a brand though has very strong potential in every industrial segment, we want to progress in a concentrated way and therefore, we are restricting our growth pans to specific segments so that the growth is in a concentrated way and we are able to control the growth and meet the customers’ demand in a qualitative approach. This is always better than growing in all segments at a time and creating huge impact on meeting all commitments simultaneously.
What are the key technological trends that are driving the couplings industry?With more and more customers entering into global market, the qualitative demands are getting prioritised very fast. Customers are keen to elevate their products in terms of global quality. As such, the earlier trend of getting low-cost, average quality sub-products is getting eliminated. KTR being already the global leader for power transmission solutions and having a globally spread network, has the capacity to meet qualitative demands.How do you see the competitiveness in the Indian market today? What measures does the company take to remain competitive?Through KTR’s internal quality program – MbK (Made By KTR), we are getting the manufacturing licenses and expertise transferred from our Principals to the Indian plant. We are constantly upgrading the plant set-up and vendor-base to get geared up and cope with the increased inflow of demands. We are focusing on a few segments and orienting all our sales and marketing efforts in a streamlined way to target and achieve increments.
A very wide product range and capability of developing custom made solutions makes us one step ahead of the other players in the market. With the internal upgradation and capacity increase, we are also getting more and more compatible commercially and are at par with the other local players. We never devaluate our competitors during our transactions with the customers. We always say that we are better.
What measures do you take to maintain the quality of low-cost solutions for different kinds of applications?Our products are so designed that they do not at all need frequent after sales service. With our products in use, customers also observe drastic reduction in maintenance/replacement costs of the other allied components, improvement in working efficiency etc. In most of the cases, our qualitative solutions are cheaper, whereas in some cases the initial higher investment helps the customers to save long term running/operating costs. Principally, best quality and cheap prices do not go together and customers are ready to pay premium for better quality always.
Could you mention some of the milestones achieved by KTR in India?KTR India successfully crossed 2010 turnover in Sept 2011 itself. Overall growth is visible in domestic business. Against 25 per cent growth in 2010, we are now aiming at more than 36 per cent growth for 2011.
KTR group has set a mission to be 400 million euro company in 2016. With this mission, and knowing the potential Indian economy has to offer within these coming years, KTR India has to contribute to a great extent in this group mission.
KTR is not just a supplier but a problem solver, please explain?Being able to support the design with proven results from our Test bed and also with the help of electronic tools we are able to do critical analysis and foresee the total working cycle of the application. With this, we are not only able to ensure that our product sustains all the working complications but at times, we are able to suggest tips / changes in the entire power transmission chain to the benefit of the our OEMs.  Moreover, our designs are so fool-proof that we hardly focus on after sales spares requirements. While dealing with new customers, we are always keen to get into the problematic areas first so that we get opportunity to suggest solutions and gain confidence of customers to see us as a solution provider.