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Interview with Mr Rahul Patel

Mr Rahul Patel
Mr Rahul Patel
Managing Director
Sintex Industries Ltd
Sintex Industries Ltd

Marking seven decades of success, established in the year 1931, Sintex Industries Limited (earlier known as The Bharat Vijay Mills Ltd) is the subsidiary of Sintex Group, a reputed group of companies with diversified interests in the arena of textiles, plastics, homeopathic medicines, and textile machinery engineering. Sintex Industries Ltd operates through two divisions – textiles and plastics. In the area of textiles, the company is pioneer in high value fabrics and converting fibre into finished packaged fabrics. Company also manufactures fashion fabrics consisting of varied product mix in Cottons and Blends. Its product range includes yarn dyed shirting, jacquard & Dobby Structures, corduroys, bottomweights, solid dyed, Poplins & Dobby Shirting with varieties of weaves, varieties of jacquard, dobby & leno structured furnishing fabrics, organic cotton certified by union control, linen, cotton with linen, silk, lycra, nylon, tinsel and viscose and surface coating with pigment colors. The Company is backed with workforce of 2000 employees. In last five years Sintex’s outlook has changed to a multi-product, multinational diversified group and turnover has increased more than five folds. Mr Rahul Patel is the MD of Sintex Industries Ltd. He is an MBA from USA. He started his career with family owned business Sintex Group in year 1983, and in 1994, was promoted as Whole Time Director responsible for looking after the management and mainly concentrating to locate strategy for export of Company’s textiles business. It was in the year 2004, he was appointed as Managing Director. He is accredited for changing the Company into a multinational, multi product and diversified company and under his stewardship turnover of Sintex Industries has raised five folds. Recently, in a survey conducted by a reputed magazine Business World to pick ‘India’s Most Valuable CEOs’, Mr Patel ranked first in Industrial sectoral ranking, and fourth in value ranking. In a talk with Face2Face team, Mr Rahul Patel verbalizes his stance on catastrophic recession and the strategy to turn it into opportunity.

How would you like to describe the ‘Seven Decades of Success’ in life of Sintex’s textile business wing- Bharat Vijay Mills? Which were the major mile stones?

BVM (Bharat Vijay Mills) was incorporated in 1931 and it has more than 7 decades of un-interrupted dividend record. During this period, the company has grown from a small Textile Mill to multi product Multinational Company.

In 1975, the Company diversified into Plastics and after that there were major modernization programs in Textiles from 1997 onwards and setting up plastic business across India. Beginning 2007 onwards, the Company started acquiring international companies with their plants in France, Germany, Slovakia etc. in Europe and also in USA.

 

Textiles can be called as the heritage industry for India. How do you see it performing currently?

Textile has been one of the oldest and most labour oriented industries established in the Country and especially Ahmedabad had many producing units which have long history of existence with many ups and downs. Many Mills could not continue and have to close down.

Today also the times are very challenging but companies versatile in their product range will face less problems.

What trends do you observe amongst your customers & consumers preferences in the backdrop of recession?

Sintex has diversified and specialized in structured fabrics and up market segments. Since it has distinct advantage of quality and designs and the flexibility to change quickly has helped us to move ahead of many competitors. The greatest change is in delivery time and pricing.

What helps Sintex Group to ensure its lead in select sector where the market is studded with local and international competitors?

Sintex offers variety of innovative products backed up with good international and local designing. This back up along with good quality and timely delivery greatly enhance the customer confidence and satisfaction in the company. More over, we have an excellent team of professionals working towards achieving this result.

Manufacturers of Cotton made, especially in India, are finding themselves on the horns of dilemma due to recent turmoil going on in this market. Am sure the situation goes same for your company too being cotton-made textiles producer. What is your say? What remedy have you resorted to strengthen bottom line?

What ever I said earlier stands and more over; one has to cut costs where-ever necessary. In fact I am sure, we will emerge stronger by working even more efficiently.

Recession is a bad time. There is one school of thought which considers it to be an opportunity to invest and expand at lower rate and reap the best returns later. What is your strategy?

Yes, recession is a bad time for every one, but one must not forget that it offers so many opportunities as well. We are always evaluating situation and scouting for the right opportunities. As a group, our philosophy has been “Active Thinking” leading to productive growth. We are following that path.

Our Interim budget has failed to meet expectations of all industries. What all consequences do you envisage on your industry?

What ever the Government does, it will never meet industry’s expectations. In business, a lot of local units are working partial capacities or are completely shut down.

Are you satisfied with the measures taken by the government to help industry in this tough time?

There was nothing in the budget for us and Government should seriously look into enhancing exports benefits like draw back for textile industries to make them more competitive internationally. Even cotton prices will be going up with the new announcement in the policy.

‘Save Environment’ had been diligently propagated mission especially as a CSR ethic. What record does your group maintain on this front?

We have done various methods on environmental issue based on the ethics of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). We are strictly following eco-friendly methods of production, state of the art effluent treatment plant operating round the clock to avoid pollution. We also maintain environmental standards to ensure safe handling of our products and have bagged Organic Cotton Certificate from Control Union, The Netherlands, Oeko-Tx 100 certificate by Testex, Swtizerland. and Fair Trade Certificate, issued by Flo-Cert, Germany. We have also planted lot of trees in and around our Mill’s premises. Safe guard the environment for future generation is the motto of Sintex Industries.

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Published on: 30/03/2009

DISCLAIMER: All views and opinions expressed in this column are solely of the interviewee, and they do not reflect in any way the opinion of Fibre2Fashion.com.

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