Mr. Jitendra gives insights in the industry of dies and mold. “As this is a very competitive field, India needs to manufacture its own raw material,” says Mr. Jitendra. He also talks about how the Atmanirbhar Bharat initiative encourages manufacturers to make components in India.
Mr. Dipesh Jaju, CEO and 2nd generation entrepreneur at Pawan Group. He had done his mechanical engineering in 2010 after that he joined his family business. Mr. Dipesh has spent the last 12 years at his company, now heading marketing and new product development and operations. Pawan group is a 25-year-old company which was established in 1996. Initially, they were a trading company from 2002 they started manufacturing and basically are the manufacturers of standard parts for sheet metal dies and plastic injection molds. They have around more than 3000 customers across India who use their product and also, they export to more than 70 countries.
Mr. Dipesh has both the manufacturing as well trading business out of which 80% of the product they manufacture and 20% of the product they source. 99% products are made in India and some of the raw materials are imported or some of the child parts which are required in their product.
Mr. Dipesh’s company, Pawan Group has six product verticals like dice springs is their pioneer product which they manufacture. They are the first manufacturers of die things in India from 2017 and were also manufacturing gas springs which is similar to die springs and used in high pressure application press tools or mechanical presses or molds. So, at present they are the only manufacturers to make gas springs of this type in India. These are the two products which are the highlights of Mr. Dipesh’s work. Recently they started manufacturing cam units so they are one of the very few manufacturers of cam units in India.
Dice springs are basically the rectangular wire springs. The advantages of the rectangular wire springs are that it takes more force in the less space available. It can get a better compression also this is categorized as per ISO standard. Mr. Dipesh has its own Power Max standard which is their proven standard. This brings better load ratings than standard springs in gas springs. Gas springs are specialized products used in a sheet metal dyes only and the pressure field in these gas springs are around 150 to 180 bar pressure and this brings start from load taking capacity of 170 to up to around 20 tons capacity.
“I definitely don’t feel that we have faced challenges, like we have some OK quality or the product range or availability may vary from this thing”, says Mr. Dipesh regarding the challenges they face. India has very good manufacturing facilities overall. At the higher end they need to export a few parts as a company. Mr. Dipesh didn’t face any serious challenges while developing these products in India. They have got very decent support from all the manufacturers across India and when they develop the product, they get very good feedback also from their customers. The customers are also willing to use new products developed in India. “If you give a desirable quality at a reasonable price then there is no challenge”, comments Mr. Dipesh as he talks how India has a lot of manufacturing opportunities.
Mr. Dipesh has different teams who work on different products and they always try to keep on developing new things in India. Recently the raw material they were importing from last 15 years during the COVID or prior to just COVID, they developed that raw material in India. The engineering team who worked on the raw material, some of them were Mr. Nityanand Jadhav, Mr. Sachine Bagor, Mr. Shubham and for cam unit the team was Mr. Madhav, Mr. Shyam. They have around 25 to 30 engineers who are working with them, some are working from more than 10 years.
From the manufacturing perspective Indian manufacturing industries are growing continuously, the campaign affected in a positive way and there is sense recognition to promote Indian companies. “The sales have increased more after COVID because due to COVID a lot of companies decided to localize because of disturbance in the global change” says Mr. Dipesh as he talks about the ‘Make in India’ campaign. There was a huge amount of disturbance in the global supply chain and because of this the ‘Make in India’ branding means making India companies aware of new technology and encouraging them to innovate. This helps maintain the quality delivery standards as per what the global brands or global companies are giving because price wise if they manufacture the product in India, they would be definitely commercially effective as compared to what global products are.
Mr. Dipesh started exports from the last seven to eight years. It is a slow journey for him, but exporting needs its own time to build the relationship with the global market. Only thing is that one needs to penetrate the market and Mr. Dipesh’s products have been very well welcomed overall in the global market. “I can say proudly that when we started our business which imported the die spring from Italy is now exporting the same product to Italy” says Mr. Dipesh regarding the journey he has been through in manufacturing. This is a type of achievement Mr. Dipesh has seen and is proud that he is the exporter of products in the European market or Middle East market.
‘Make in India’ campaign has its own advantages but still the companies import a lot of engineering components or any of the general goods. “We are still very much import dependent on lot of products so we cannot say that we had definitely given a fight to the Chinese companies” comments Mr. Dipesh regarding the Indian imports. Companies had given a fight to the foreign brands. India itself is a very big market considering the economy and population. India needs to push for voluminous production and focus on exporting. Indian industry doesn’t lack on the technical front, the service front giving the feedback, giving the commitment or making the product in time where the companies should improve. Indian companies need to work very hard to make a mark in the global market but surely it can happen one day.