Government has to incentivise exports: M Chaudhari

What are your major products for the industry? What are the distinguishing characteristics and features of your major products?

We are primarily a solution provider in post spinning winding of textile industry. Our product portfolio services the winding needs of different applications like soft package listing where you need assembly winders in weaving. We are basically a winding machine manufacturing home. The precision winding machines give a good quality package as compared to random winders. We make both kind of winders, but our focus in on precision.

How is the company meeting the challenges of the markets demands today? Which are your stronger export markets? Any plans to expanding to other countries?

Right now in India there is almost no demand for our machines due to the Covid-19 scenario. We have a significant potential export market. Thanks to the continuous technological innovations in the product and manufacturing process to achieve consistently good quality at competitive prices.

We have been exporting to more than 40 countries. We are the only company who exports ready machines to China. Indonesia and Turkey are our major markets. Going forward, these markets will remain the same. In future, we do have plans to enter other markets, but now it is too early to talk about them.

Our machines are completely manufactured in India. We had joint ventures with quite a few companies for many years. We had partnership with Saurer of Germany, but now our products are completely made in India.

How was the response to your participation at ITME AFRICA exhibition?

The exhibition was also affected due to Covid. We had expected a lot of visitors from the African countries. We have some customers in Kenya, but they couldn’t come due to Covid. ITME AFRICA is just a beginning. I would say that your response has been decent.

Do you think the government can do further to ease the pain of textile Machinery manufacturing companies?

I feel the government has to incentivise exports by supporting participation in major exhibitions. What I see Chinese companies presence in exhibitions as compared to Indian presence. We should also follow the same of encouraging participation in exhibitions by subsidising those.

The government should facilitate acquiring latest technologies through joint ventures and mergers and acquisitions. They should discourage import of second hand machines. What I understand is that around 75 per cent of the machinery that is available in textile industry are imported.

Modernisation and automation is increasing across industries. What is the significance of this for Peass?

We have been actually actively doing it at our end in manufacturing side. We have recently inaugurated state-of-the-art assembly factory for our customers. We have been adding automation on our machines like auto doffing, which we have introduced successfully.

It has been more than a month for the lockdown. How it has impacted the business? What are your expectations from the government?

Covid has brought the whole business to a standstill. We have certain export orders in hand, which would see us through this difficult time after we start our operations. Our main focus is to how to come back to the normal.

Once the lockdown is open, the main challenge will be logistics. From the government, we can expect quick recovery of opening up of exports good finance facilities for keeping the cash flow running. Cash flow issues will come up because most of the units would not be intending to do any capital expenditure unless it’s a new unit and is dependent on starting the project.

Unlike other companies, labour shortage may not be an issue because labour is mostly local.

Have you recalibrated your growth plan due to Covid-19?

I believe everyone has to recalibrate their plans because the lifestyle has changed. Expense budget is the priority. The channels of distribution will change post-Covid. Even the global economy is suffering. I believe that this is the time to put more investments into R&D if you have many new technologies.