'Find your own way' – A.T.E. scion advices young textile leaders

09 Dec '11

9 min read

Being away from home in the US, meant he used to feel homesick for home-cooked food. His mother and elder sister convinced him to learn cooking while on his first summer holiday in India. He calls himself a fairly good cook, and rates himself at six on a scale of ten in culinary skills. His children too enjoy the dishes cooked by him.

The most important quality he admires in his father – Mr Atul Bhagwati is his perseverance. Anuj says, “He never lost his cool. He never compromised on values, and always tried to build a consensus which would be in the interest of everyone around. He also built a ‘we will do it attitude’ and a committed culture at A.T.E, which is still helping in the development of the organisation”.

A.T.E was started in 1939 by Shyamlal Bhagwati, grand-uncle of Anuj and a freedom fighter, to sell German textile machinery in India, mainly to commercially complement his political role as a freedom fighter against the English rule.

After World War – II ended, Shyamlal went to Germany and tried to trace the German suppliers, with whom he had contacts before the war. He established contacts with Trützschler GmbH which led to Hans Trützschler visiting India in the late 40s and also laid the foundation of what is still now a more than a six-decade old flourishing partnership.

Mr Atul Bhagwati joined the A.T.E business in 1954. He was instrumental in opening A.T.E offices across all the textile hubs of India to sell machinery in that decade. In the 1960’s, A.T.E arranged licenses from many of its overseas principals to manufacture machinery in India for interested Indian companies. A.T.E became the principal agent for all the Indian licensees of the overseas companies responsible for sales and service.

In the 1970’s, Anuj’s uncle – Mr Prakash Bhagwati spearheaded the manufacturing efforts of the A.T.E Group. This led to A.T.E, foraying itself in to textile machinery manufacturing joint ventures with the likes of Stork, Trützschler, and Erhardt + Leimer.

Spurred by the textile mill strikes of the 1980s, A.T.E thought of diversifying and ventured into production of graphic printing, pumps, electronic and also magnets. With the opening of the economy in the 1990’s, it decided to focus only on textile, graphics and pumps, and exited magnets and electronics. At that time, A.T.E. also set up a new joint venture with Monforts of Germany.

The new century saw A.T.E forging more alliances with textile machinery producers, including the one with Zinser, Germany, to create Zinser Textile Systems, which Anuj directly overlooked.

In 2007, A.T.E was restructured. The JV with Trützschler and Zinser stayed with Anuj’s family, while his uncle and cousin set up a new company - Inspiron, which took over the A.T.E manufacturing businesses like flyers and JVs with Monforts, Stork and Johnson Pumps.

Once on his own, his keen interest in environment led him to make investments in the field like energy efficient cooling, water treatment plants, static elimination, register controls for graphic printing and remote monitoring.

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