In the past few decades, the technological and the socio-economic transformations that India has been going through have made India rise as a potential player in the world of business. As the business complexities are growing day by day with rapid technological upgradations and emergence of innumerable entrepreneurial ventures, businesses are striving towards scalability in order to thrive in the competitive face of domestic market. This is where CEOs play the key role to synchronize the productive force of their organizations with technology and innovation in order to pave the path to profitability and business growth. There are challenges that today’s CEOs face in executing their visions such as chalking out strategic plan for future growth, communicating changing business needs to the workforce or driving innovation and commitment to a common goal.
Ramakant Utturkar, CEO at a Pune based sealant manufacturing company Chemische has been managing such challenges with sheer excellence. Flourishing under his guidance, Chemische has emerged as an eminent manufacturer of sealants, adhesives and coatings while serving the domain of automobile, construction, HVAC and several other industries. With a vast experience of more than two decades in the sealants and coatings industry, Ramakant incorporated his insights with technology and set the company on a journey to growth while etching the brand’s presence in the international market.
However, there were initial challenges while transforming the labour-intensive mode of production to automation. In addition, an organization has to tap into the right talent pool and manage its team of professionals in order to augment business scalability. Ramakant with his in-depth industry knowledge and able leadership overcame all these challenges and took Chemische to the new heights over the years. The Industry Outlook Magazine engaged in a conversation with Ramakant Utturkar to know more about the company and his leadership journey.
Give us a brief account of your educational journey and prior industry experience.
I started my career in 1986.
I completed my B.Sc. tech from Pune in surface coating which is about paints and coatings. I started my first job in Bombay Paints where I worked as a chemist. Later I joined the R&D team of Nerolac Paints and later the technical services. I got into the marketing segment of the automotive paints at the initial stage and finally started working in the sealant industry, specifically for the automotive sealants. I have an extensive experience of nearly thirty years in the sealants now.
After travelling throughout almost entire India and many other countries, visiting a sizeable number of OEMs also working in majority of the segments in the industry, we started Chemische Global in 2011 in Pune with the polysulfide sealants, which is used for the construction industry basically. And in 2014, we had a breakthrough in the bus body industry. Back then they were importing the polyurethane sealant. There were no sealant manufacturers who produced this sort of sealant at that time.
Hence, we started developing a new version of the polyurethane sealant which is known as MS polymer sealant. We tied up with the Japanese company named Kaneka and started manufacturing MS polymer sealants in India. Being the precursor in manufacturing the new kind of sealants we started with the bus body industry. Nowadays, every bus in the Indian roads has our sealants. We saw a significant growth until the pandemic hit. Although the phase was a challenge for us we managed to sail through and entered the construction industry in the post-COVID time with a new variant of polyurethane sealants. The journey is thriving on inventing new products and constantly redefining the applications of sealants. We had a turnover of 60 Cr last year. Now we are aiming to touch 100 Cr this year.
Tell us about the in-house manufacturing facility of your company and its volume of production. In addition to that, we would like to know about the technology Chemische is leveraging.
We have installed an advanced manufacturing facility to aid the process of innovation as per the Japanese standards of production. As we prioritize delivering quality of global standard with competitive pricing we have deployed a full-fledged R&D sector. In order to cater a wide consumer base, our production process starts with analysing the consumer needs, product conceptualization and performing simulation to check reliability and effectiveness of our products. The current manufacturing facility that we have acquired is equipped with automated system for mixing, compounding, filling and packaging. All the products undergo robust quality checking before dispatch and application.
Currently we are manufacturing around three lakh sausages per month along with polysulfide sealant production of around 100,000 Kgs in every month in the four manufacturing plants. We have the capacity of producing 6000 tonnes volumes per annum. Apart from our pan India presence we export to the US, UK, Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand, Bangladesh,, Sri Lanka, Japan UAE, Egypt, Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, Maldives and Philippines. Our company is certified with ISO 9001, ISO 140001 and IATF 16949. Our state-of-art production facility complies with Japanese standards. The in-house laboratory is capable of testing the products according to various international standards. We are the first company in India having developed a wide range of environment-friendly sealant and adhesives with low VOCs as per the stringent guidelines for green building sealants by TUV Germany.
We would like to know about the expansion plans that you have for your company. Where do you see the company in the next five years or if you have any short-term goal for the next one of two years?
We are committed to achieve the highest degree of quality by continually improvising our product offerings that are being modified in line with the consumers’ changing or newly emerged requirements. In order to live up to our objectives, we are planning to set up modernised technical centres across India. We are also focusing on building customer awareness and strengthening our network of dealers across the country to ensure more customer engagement. Apart from these, we are looking forward to improve our digital presence and increase our footprints in the global market.
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