Sachin Parab Chief Executive Officer International Business for Greaves Cotton Ltd

‘The whole world is open for us after acquiring an international company Veedol’

Sachin Parab is the Chief Executive Officer at International Business for Greaves Cotton Ltd, one of the reputed engineering companies in India. Parab holds a graduation in Mechanical Engineering and a Post Graduation in International Trade from premier institutes in India. He did his first job at TELCO (now called Tata Motors Ltd) in India and assigned for seven years in USA with Mahindra USA Inc. after some time. He also served in Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd for 13 years. He was busy with Escorts Ltd as the Head of International Business for farm tractors manufactured in India and Europe before joining Greaves Cotton Ltd. In an interview with Sushila Budhathoki of New Business Age, Parab shares about the importance of his products in the developing countries. Excerpts:

Could you please highlight the reasons of your visit? 

Nepal is an important market for us. I came here to reinforce our commitment to the market as a company and to meet the customers who are using our equipments. We want to assure them our continuous support and services thorough our distributors in Nepal.

Could you please tell us about your company? 

We are one of the oldest and reputed engineering companies in Indian Subcontinent. Established in 1859, Greaves Cotton Limited is now more than 150 year’s old company. At the core, we are basically engine manufacturers. In India, we are the largest diesel engine manufacturing company producing over a half of million diesel engines every year. In addition, we also produce diesel generators and equipments which can be used in construction and agriculture. 

How does your product help the organizations in Nepal? 

We are offering world class technologies positioned in between European and Chinese products with competitive price. Our products are easy to use, maintain and repair. We offer high value for money in all our products. Our products are modern yet it is having less of electronics in it and they are more robust and heavy duty. These products are suitable to the similar operating condition in India and Nepal. For example, the terrain is tough, the usage is high and maintenance is low. Our products have been designed for such operating conditions ensuring higher uptime and customer satisfaction. Durability of the products is what the costumers are concerned about.

How do you see the South Asian Market for your products? 

Apart from India, we are having a lot of encouraging results in Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh. We are either no. 1 or 2 in Indian market. We see us achieving such leading position even in SAARC region. A lot of growth and development projects are likely to operate in South Asia. We observe that building infrastructure is the prime need of this continent and we have products which can help develop building infrastructures. We are also present in the farm machinery space serving the agrarian economy of South Asia. Nepal has a lot of infrastructure projects and we could be partners on this part. 

We entered in Nepali market a couple of years ago and we believe that this was the right time we become partners in such projects. We are offering products as good as the products offered by developed world in affordable prices. 

How can Nepali industries get your service in Nepal? 

Our products are distributed through very able distributors in Nepal. The distributors representing us here in Nepal are MAW Engineering Ltd (Morang Auto Works) and IDMC Pvt. Ltd. We have extremely good technical manpower and service network in Nepal. Manpower in these distributors has been trained by specialists on the product and technology in our factory in India. Through them we are ensuring the end users would get proper services.

What are the business plans for your company? 

We are trying to expand our product range. In the diesel generators, our current range is 25 to 500 KVA and now we are getting into the bigger market which is 5 to 25 KVA. In next few months we will be seeing lots of products specially diesel generators, in smaller size. We have made some new technological development on our concrete equipment. We are launching new products in S-tube technology concrete pumps, smaller size concrete batching plants, bigger size of ready mix concrete transit mixers in near future. The product offering to the customers would expand and we believe that these products will contribute to our expansion drive. We will be launching these products in Nepal along with Indian market.

How do you find the level of competition in the Nepali market? 

We are having a healthy competition in Nepal. I believe the competition is always good for consumers while it gives us chances to perform our best. We want to ensure the customer gets the best product support and value for the money in the product offering we give. We believe that we are able to match with the competition in terms of features and quality and also beat the manufacturers coming from both the developed and developing world with our ability to serve them through our local channel partners in Nepal.