Coimbatore-based Techno Electronics & Instruments has always strived to match with the rapid pace and upgrading its manufacturing facility at periodical intervals of time. The company’s well-equipped factory floor shop has been a trendsetter, with its modern machinery and adherence to quality management systems. It makes sure that all the safety norms and regulations are followed in its manufacturing unit.
R Balakrishnan, CEO of Techno Electronics & Instruments, takes us through the journey of his company from a small beginning in 1992, in a tete-a-tete with ITJ team members Karthik Muthuveeran and Sripathy B.
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Over the years, Techno has grown to become one of the leading providers of testing instruments for the textile industry. Take us through your journey over the years.
Techno is one of the leading manufacturers of cotton, fabric and yarn testing instruments in India. The group’s headquarter is located in Coimbatore, one of India’s key textile hubs. Our products are extensively used in quality control labs of ginners, spinners, yarn and cotton traders, garment manufacturers, as well as fabric manufacturing units.
It was in 1996, when we entered into textile testing instruments market with a small team, and now we have more than 30 employees. We are counted among the top names in the field of textile testing instruments. We now operate out of a sprawling 2,000 sq ft of modern work space consisting of our factory and office-cum R&D centre.
What turned out to be the turning point in your career?
In 1996, when we started the manufacturing, we had a tough scope of selling our products due to lack of manpower. With continuous effort in team building activity in departments like R&D, marketing, service and customer support, etc.., we came up with a tremendous market reach. Earlier we bind up with six major products such as fibre fineness tester, trash separator, fibre bundle strength tester, NEP counting templates, cotton fibre sorter and moisture tester, which are very essential for textile mills.
Growing from strength to strength with the support of R&D, we emerged fully in 2013 with four more product ranges for the textile Industry. The technology and innovation has given us more confident in selling our products in India, especially in Tamil Nadu. It developed more sales for our products. Mills started to find out more about our products and reached us to buy our instruments for their needs. Now, we are one of the leaders in textile testing industry.
There are many textile testing products available in the market. What makes your product different from the one from competitors?
Techno has got a monopoly in India with the product called automatic pneumatic bursting strength tester. The USP of this instrument is that it does the function with the technology of pneumatic-cum hydraulic feature. Other marketers have the only option to end with their product with only hydraulic-cum manual process.
Apart from the technical side, Techno has a great bond with their customers by giving more consultation, more explanation, and more service comfort. Instruments with user friendly work and service options are additional attractiveness for the customers to buy Techno products.
What is your market reach?
As I said before, we started by reaching out the entire Tamil Nadu market directly, and then after successive results, we reached out pan India. We appointed agents State-wise and I am pretty proud that it is working out very well. We have entered selling our products in the top textile groups like Arvind Mills, Raymond, Sangam, MR Weaving, RSWM, Vardaman, to name a few. I can only say that the demand of our products is increasing quickly.
Other than domestic, we have entered into export markets like Vietnam, Indonesia and many other countries in Europe with the support of Premier Evolvics. Customers feel at ease to buy our products when they see our collaboration with Premier Evolvics.
In terms of performance, how was 2017 for Techno and what are your plans for 2018?
Techno has performed extremely well in 2017 especially in the second half of the year despite setbacks from GST and demonetisation. With observation from the mills about the demands in 2018 for our products, we strongly believe Techno will have a growth more than 20 to 30 per cent when comparing with 2017. Our personalised service to customers will be our key to success.