Great Companies: What are the various services and products provided by your company? Vinay Kumar: Our company works with various roofing and facade solutions with a design, supply and build model. We work with Architects, Real Estate Companies, Project Management Consultants, Facade Consultants, Construction companies to carry out their complicated roofing and facade projects. Our company is head quarted in Mumbai but we undertake projects all over India. We typically work with new age materials in facade in roofs which are new in the international and Indian markets and follow philosaopy of the materials being No or Low Maintenance. Great Companies: How do you ensure the efficiency and accuracy of the goods and services provided? Vinay Kumar: Our busines essentially comprises of the finishing job of the buildings - whether commercial, insititutional or rsidential. Therefore as a matter of standard practise we have to give extra attention to the look and feel of our product and service since this is what a client will see up front. hence we inculcate in our personnel - noth supervisors and the project managers and also installation the need to mantain very good quality standards and finsihing. Also in our vendor chain also we emphasize to them the need to mantain quality in the materials being provided by them - whether it is sourced within India or overseas. Great Companies: How was the journey so far? Vinay Kumar: I have been in business close to 26 years and it has been a satisfying journey - I have had my shares of ups and downs, shares of mistakes and good years - however finally it boils down to the 3 Ps - Patience Perseverance and People - which drives business and makes it a success.
Great Companies: What are the strategies you adopt to stay ahead in the race? Vinay Kumar:We discovered early on that every building product has a life cycyle which consists of introduction into a market for 2 years, growth for 3 - 4 years and then commoditisation for the next 8 - 10 years. The main profit is generally made in the growth phase as after that when the commoditisation starts then prices starts falling and a lot of competiton comes in which destroys the value creation in the product. Hence the strategy used by us is to stay ahead of the curve - we general work with a product for the 1st 8 years or so and then move on to other products which are being promoted parallely and in the early stages of the introduction or growth phase. Great Companies: What are the struggles and challenges you face?
Vinay Kumar: We are clsoely connected to the real estate and infrastructure sectors so whenever these sectors get afflicted with a slow down it impacts our business as well.
The gestation cycle of an inquiry and the result in an order can be very long - for instance there are projects where we work with architects at the design stage and it converts into a order around 2 years or more down the road once the building civil works is ready and it is time to clads the same. So the challenge is to keep track of the status of these projects right through its life cycle and be in touch with all the shareholders including architects, client, main civil contractor and the PMC to be able to follow up and get the order at the right time.
Payments in projects can also be a challenge and these may be stuck for a variety of reasons - lack of funds with client mid way through the project, project going on hold due to clearances, change in drawings midway through the project etc.