R Goutham Ram, Director, Craftsman Automation Pvt Ltd, speaks on the company history and ‘Make in India’ mission.

Take us through the journey of Craftsman Automation.

Since 1986, Craftsman Automation has been manufacturing products for automotive OEMs and marine industry. It started as a small job shop with a couple of machines, and how has grown into a company with more than 3,000 people. Craftsman Automation now develops, markets and sells products in the material handling and material storage industry.

What are the major application areas of your products?

Major application areas include material handling and material storage. In material storage, we have standard racks, and we make automotive storage and retrieval systems. These systems can be used in any segment including retail, healthcare, pharmaceutical and manufacturing.

In terms of revenue and exports, how has been Craftsman Automation faring so far?

In 2004, our export market was about 80 per cent, and by 2008, we were down to 60 per cent. The reason is that we wanted to diversify globally. Now, I can proudly say that around 80 per cent of our sales are domestic and only 20 per cent are exports. We have grown consistently at a CAGR of around 21 to 23 per cent and we look towards 20 per cent year on year growth. Apart from this, we are growing in new segments, products and customer base, and this how we will be able to achieve a 20 per cent yearly growth.

Competitions are tiff in global market. How do you compete with MNCs?

We still have a lot to learn from our global companies in terms of quality, delivery and customer satisfaction. The export market has taught us to become world class in terms of manufacturing excellence, product quality, etc. With this knowledge, we are able to compete with the multinational corporations and proudly call ourselves as an indigenous manufacturer of world-class products.

PM Modi launched the ‘Make in India’ initiative with the goal of encouraging multinational and domestic companies to manufacture their products in India. What are your views on this wave?

The ‘Make in India’ campaign has been instrumental in bringing companies and attention to the Indian market. However, we still see that the market is going through some changes, i.e., demonetisation and GST. The Indian market is primed for growth and we will definitely see an explosion in growth in coming years. We can overtake China and will be the fastest growing economy in the world.

What is the major showcase product at Intec?

Automated storage machine has been utilised extensively in developed countries mainly because of the requirement for quick access of goods and material. Whenever a person has to go and pick up or search for the material, the customer has to wait. Today, nobody likes to wait. Everybody wants a single day’s delivery from e-commerce sites and they expect it to be present at their doorstep. This product will help customers to get the products without the customer having to wait.

Instead of employing people to go and search for the product, we can have a single person operating in a company system without any risk. This is an added advantage.

Does it involve complications for the user?

We developed this product over a span of 4 years and past 2 years we have been refining the product and running reliability tests in all spheres. Extensively researched and found what are the possible issues and possible failures. What we have found is that reliability and uptime is the key of any automated service retrieval system. And we ensure that the machine is at least 99.99 per cent uptime and any lean time to repair that is NPTR is within a matter of hours and not a matter of days because customer cannot wait for days today.

What are the major reason for participating in Intec?

We have not participated in Intec for the last six years. The reason why we participated this year is because I think the market is growing. We have been regular visitors in Intec for the past 30 years almost since its inception in 1988 and have been one of the founding members of Codissia. However, [in coming years] we plan to continue our relationship with them.

Inputs by SRIPATHY B