Two Indian brothers cast aside irrefutable “American Dreams” to embrace the identity of Indian technocrats with pride in the 1980s. No wonder, ‘PROUDLY INDIAN’ is an embossing on all the products manufactured by their company Metal Impregnation India Pvt. Ltd., a mark of saluting and supporting ‘Make in India’ programme.
The journey started in the 1980s with two brothers Saibal Sen and Probal Sen, graduated from College of Engineering, Pune in Metallurgy and Mechanical Engineering respectively, ferreted their way through the business houses before setting up their own company Metal Impregnations Indian Pvt. Ltd in 1989, one of the top five players in vacuum impregnation technology and equipment globally today with the complete package of impregnation equipment supplies, impregnation resin supplies, and impregnation services all under one group.
After starting off, the company formed a joint venture with IMP Germany to tap the potential in the Asian region.
They built their first Dry-Wet porosity sealing system in 1989 and installed the same at their Bhosari works to provide JOBSHOP Impregnation services to auto majors such as Telco (presently Tata Motors), Bajaj Auto, Bajaj Tempo (presently Force Motors), Premier Automobiles, the Kirloskar group and others. Next, Metal Impregnations started equipment supplies and machines were supplied pan India to major industrial houses such as Hindustan Motors, Lucas TVS, Premier automobiles, Leyland group, Maruti Suzuki, Kirloskar Oil Engines and several other Aluminium and Cast Iron foundries who were all tier one suppliers to the OEMs.
Soon the company became the first ever Indian exporter of impregnation equipment to Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia and slowly spread across to the Asia Pacific, having supplied machines to Foundry corporations located in Japan, New Zealand, and Australia.
European and American markets were yet to be conquered taking on the international competition from European and American manufacturers.
The brothers worked on important projects with DRDL, Hyderabad with acclaimed scientists in 1990 for developing the vacuum impregnation process for the Prithvi Missile components. Extending this capability, Metal Impregnations worked with the Israeli Defence, supplying a fully automatic system to the Israeli Military, and also to the Nissan and Peugeot foundry suppliers in Iran.
The first major order from the American market came from Honeywell Inc, wherein Metal Impregnations was preferred over European and American companies and for the first time supplied a fully automatic robotic operator less system.
Meanwhile, backward and forward integration for the company had been a constant focus and as such, in 1999 Metal Impregnations joined hands with Bayer GmbH, a specialized German company building state of the art leak testing and engine assembly machines, acting as their service partners in India.
It was followed by a detailed R&D programme to propose a fully Indian made impregnation sealant, TEKNOSEAL TSP 99, as a high-quality cost-effective alternative to industries worldwide.
This vision gave the company the benefit of being self-reliant and eliminated total dependency on imports. Teknoseal today is one of the very few vacuum impregnation sealant supplying companies worldwide and has earned an international reputation with global approval from international bodies and auto majors.
Today, the group with a workforce of 100 personnel and has grown 100 fold from a turnover of 3 million in 1990 to its present turnover of over INR 350 Million.
Rightly they say, “We wanted to deviate away from the normal career path of the American dream and instead make an Indian product that would take us worldwide”.
