Staking a claim to fame

SPOTLIGHT

Kishor Desai of Kishor Pumps, has weathered the ups and downs of the economy to claim a space for his niche products Kishor Pumps Limited has come a long way since it started off in Mumbai as a small manufacturer of speciality pumps.

The Pune based pump maker now commands as much as 70 per cent of the market in the specialist pumps.

What started as a started as a small outfit in a Mumbai suburb is today a Rs 30 crore business spread over seven manufacturing locations across western Maharashtra.

"Those were the days of a closed economy and license raj. Setting up joint ventures with foreign companies was almost unheard of. So we chose technology collaboration as the way to get what we needed," recalls Kishor Desai, managing director who is at the helm since the death of the company's founder, Narayan Desai.

Desai, who had substantial exposure to German technology during his days at L&T, was quick to strike alliances with major German firms for technology to make specialised pumps in India.

One of the company's strengths, according to Kishor, is the ability to grasp the client requirement and customise pump design accordingly.

The company has made major forays in the Indian market as players like Reliance Industries, L&T, several steel plants, state electricity boards and the Nuclear Power Corporation feature on its client list.

The company grew as the Indian industry - especially sectors like chemicals and fertilisers, oil, textiles - showed strong progress. Realising the importance of exports fairly early, Kishor Pumps developed a market for itself in 40 countries across the world.

Then came the recession of the late nineties. "The recession took a major toll on our business. We came down to Rs 8 crore," Kishor recalls. As their efforts to cut costs and become a lean organisation went on, the company made major changes in its product mix. "We were too much into supplying to the capital goods sector. So we moved into more 'consumer' products like water supply and industrial water pumps and are back on track with our turnover reaching Rs 35 crore with Rs 3 crore exports," he says. These two segments have a potential to rise to Rs 400 crore in the near future.

On cards are joint ventures with overseas partners - among them the Japanese. And among the new products in the pipeline are platform pumps used by the oil exploration contractors.