- Manish Walia, President, ForkLift, GEAR

BC Equipment Trading Company (EQUIPWELL) was incorporated in 2010 to take advantage of the reach, depth and infrastructure of GEAR, an associate company, which is presently India's largest general construction equipment rental company in terms of fleet size and is fast gaining traction in the competitive world of MHE equipment rental. By pedigree, EQUIPWELL is an MNC, owned by UK and US funds and is the only professionally managed MNC company to straddle this space of MHE and construction equipment distribution and trading. Manish Walia, President - ForkLift, Gemini Equipment And Rentals Pvt Ltd (GEAR), responded to the IPF Questionnaire. Excerpts...

Material handling is the need of almost all businesses. What prompted this foray into such a competitive business?

In pursuit of new drivers of growth, GEAR is aggressively exploring strategic growth opportunities by innovatively creating space into supply chain and we feel still there is a great opportunity of improvement in the field of MHE. Being a critical link of supply chain MHE plays major role in our manufacturing and warehousing industry in India. Today the Forklift market in China is around 300,000 units where as the Indian market is only of 7000. Now you can imagine what kind of growth opportunity we have here.

What is the nature of business transacted by the company? Sales & Service or Rental?

We are into both Sales as well as into Rental. Our rental business is under the name of GEAR and forklift sales/distribution business under the name of Equipwell - BC Equipment.

Our product offering is always customer centric. We are helping our clients to remain asset light and to concentrate more on core competency rather to run around for manpower and machine management.

Any manufacturing activity?

Till date we have not ventured into MHE manufacturing but if situation demands we will do so.

What are the advantages provided by an organised equipment rental company?

It is simple - peace of mind and cost efficiency. We always come with the latest technology, which make material movement much safer and efficient. No doubt that the initial cost of our equipment is much higher but outcome is class apart. We are known in the market because of cost efficiency with product excellence and all this without comprising safety aspect.

Your MHE division was incorporated in India in 2011 - what has been the experience during these 4 years?

I must say this is very satisfying journey and great learning. What others have failed to achieve in many years we have achieved in these four years. Today we are working with almost all kinds of industries with all top class companies and we are rapidly increasing our business all over country.

It is a crowded market with large corporates as well as the unorganised sector. What is the Equipwell USP?

This is without doubt the one of the most important issues facing the large-scale adoption of mechanisation as a way of material handling technologies instead of having crude ways of material handling with human efforts to a large extent; and where safety becomes a casualty as it is ignored at great cost.

Value proposition - be it outsourcing or outright purchase we always think of customers' benefit. This may be the factor to keep us above all our competitors.

How strong/effective is the after sales service?

Our pan India presence with our own offices makes us very influential and gives better control over our client servicing activity. We have large number of trained personnel on payroll, which enables the delivery of our services to any part of the country.

What are the company's achievements?

Our numbers and continuous relationship with customers speaks about our success. Our major achievement is to make a breakthrough in FMCG companies where the requirements are very demanding.

Any breakthrough product/service launch that made a difference?

We have national tie-up with STILL Gmbh of Germany and we are extensively using these equipment in our rental fleet. STILL is a world leader in modern warehousing and very prominent name in the MHE industry. Being an authorised sole distributor we have direct access to the company, which gives us lot of advantages in terms of efficiency and seamless service to our customers.

How is present business environment?

I must say it is a growing market with lot of scope for improvement and macroeconomics plays its own role, which is looking very lucrative. Once GST comes into operation, then it will grow further with leaps and bounds.