Ingersoll Rand: Advancing the quality of life through efficient environment

Mr. Amar Kaul, Country Vice President, Compressed Air System and Services, Ingersoll Rand India.

Q. From the inception of your company, please share some of your milestones & achievements till this year?
Ingersoll Rand has been one of the oldest American investments in India dating back to 1921 and one of the first companies which made India the Global Sourcing hub for its different product lines. We have been pioneers in bringing centrifugal technology into the country as well as the Award winning “Nirvana” energy saving VSD Rotary Compressors, and Best in Class “Trishul” Dryers. Ahead of the market, Ingersoll Rand had the courage to invest in manufacturing of Centrifugal compressors in India, in 1989, when the technology was barely known and hardly accepted in India. This leading approach has been handsomely rewarded by the market. Over and above bringing global innovations to India, we also continue to design and develop local innovative solutions for our customers in India. Apart from Centrifugal Air Compressors, we have localised Contact Cooled Rotary Air Compressors, Refrigerated Air Dryers, and many other products and services, the latest being the graduation from old concept of Annual Maintenance Contracts (AMCs) to Package Care and Package Care+.

We invested heavily on “Remote monitoring” to monitor the performance of our machines through remote access system. This helps in preventive maintenance i.e. we ensure that the machine is well serviced before it reaches level of breaks down, which in turn helps in reducing machine downtime and any loss of production for the customer. Most importantly our vision is to bring to the Indian industry at a level of service that is only been exhibited in the consumer goods space as of now. We have already made couple of strides in this direction and which have been well received in the industry.

Q. Could you brief us about overall business activities of your company (tie-ups, associations, reach, network)?
With two state-of-the-art ISO-9001 and ISO-14001 approved manufacturing facilities at Ahmedabad and Sahibabad, we have a Pan-India presence with Direct sales and service offices and a well-networked distribution setup. Today, we have a strong network of our valued partners in more than 50 locations covering all Tier I-II cities in India. Globally we have 60 manufacturing sites employing 40,000 employees spread across different parts of the world. We also have tie ups with institutes like IITs & IISC for Technology Development & Innovation as well as with Top Engineering colleges for the skill development of their graduates.

Q. Can you elaborate more about the product portfolio & it’s applications?
Ingersoll Rand offers a wide range of compressors spreading from 0.75 to 4500 kW range. We are pioneers in all the three key technologies of air compression i.e. Reciprocating, Rotary & Centrifugal. On Reciprocating platform, we make compressors as small as 0.75 kW to as big as 500 kW JOSH Machines. On Rotary platform, we offer machines from 2 kW to 500 kW range. Similarly on Centrifugal platform, we have machines from 500 kW to 4500 kW. Ingersoll Rand is among the first manufacturers to offer compressors on rental basis in order to help customers avoid huge investments. Besides Compressors, we also offer the widest range of technologies for Air Treatment and Filtration solutions – Air Dryers, Filters; Storage Solutions – Air Receivers; Energy Savings Controls Solutions – System Pressure & Flow Controllers, Variable Speed Drives, Remote Monitoring as well as the Energy Saving Compressed Air Modular Piping and Distribution Solutions for increasing the overall efficiency of the entire system (demand, supply and distribution side) thereby reducing the maintenance costs and downtime. The Plant Audit Solution Services deliver a unique combination for overall optimized efficiency, reliability and operations. Our Naroda Plant facility recently has celebrated the milestone of shipping the 1000th Centac®, which has been our flagship product in our Industrial Compressor range.

Q. Which are the some of your pioneering products you introduced in the market recently or is there any plan to launch the new products?
Our dedicated Product Management and Engineering teams continuously work on understanding customer needs and then work backwards on Innovation with State-of-the-Art technologies based on efficiency improvement and sustainability. With a strong team of world-class professionals, we are able to provide superior service experience to our customers at any given time. As said before, we have already graduated multi steps from AMCs to Package Care and Package Care+. The above suite of Service Packages in summary means insurance of our machines at customer site. Customers also appreciate that we ensure uninterrupted supply of quality AIR without them deviating from focus on their core competence. For catering to Specialized Engineered Compressor packages, Ingersoll Rand has highly specialized and expert teams that can handle large projects for Customized Solutions and provide a one-stop solution right from conceptualization, design, installation till audit control. Our team of experienced engineers works closely with the customers to design packages which are passed through stringent Quality Tests and inspection before shipping to the customer locations. These are some of the innovations that we thrive on over and above the product innovation.

Q. How do you account R&D activity in your company?
We have made significant investments in R&D. We run a DSR approved laboratory in Naroda which is benchmarked against Ingersoll Rand’s global R&D facilities on regular basis for accuracy & consistency. We test the entire range of our products in this lab for its performance & reliability. In addition, we also operate Engineering Technology Centres in Bangalore and Chennai. Number of patents filed by us in US talks about our commitment to innovation through R&D. With local innovations, we have produced products like Evolution™ compressors (Rotary), Trishul dryers & 3CIIi Centac® machines which are best in class of their own with multiple patents. Often compressed air systems in factories and facilities are not energy efficient. System owners have great opportunities to improve operating margins and reduce costs through energy savings. As every industry tries to cut down costs, audits of compressed air systems help in reducing hidden costs and ultimately contribute to increase in savings. Ingersoll Rand’s Audit Solutions offers services that help our customers identify potential leakages and take corrective actions to conserve energy. Some of the real cases after acting on actions from energy audit have had pay back of less than 6 months after which is pure savings. Through our experience in handling energy audits, we have seen that the audit processes are extremely educational and informative. We encourage our customers to participate and learn the methodology during such audits apart from just monitoring and implementation. With compressed air being one of the poorly managed industrial utilities, there is enormous opportunity to change the way it works now.

Q. How do you foresee “India” as a potential market, what are the prospects?
Industrial Center of Gravity is shifting towards South & East. Emerging economies are gaining increasing share of world GDP. From 15% share in 80’s, emerging economies have outnumbered the G7 countries by gaining 40% share between 2001 and 2011. Though India GDP is still led by Services, Manufacturing sector has also increased its contribution over last decade. Considering the fact that India is still a developing country, there is great potential in infrastructure like roads, railways, power generation etc. Availability of skilled manpower, more than 40% population between 25 & 54 years and low manufacturing costs are great advantages to any enterprise doing business in India. Though the GDP came down from 9% in 2010 to 4.7% in 2013, Indian economy showed great resilience to global economic slowdown as compared to any other emerging economy. In fact, recently India displaced Japan to become the third largest economy in the world in terms of purchasing power parity (PPP). The outlook for India’s long-term growth is positive due to its young population and corresponding low dependency ratio, healthy savings and investment rates, and increasing integration into the global economy. With a stable government and expectations of post-election economic reforms, we foresee good days ahead for India.

Q. What are the distinguishing facts of global market as against the Indian market?
Currently global market is still trying to recover from the economic slowdown and is virtually stagnant. However, it should recover soon and with a major role to be played by emerging countries in this revival process. Indian population has traditionally been inclined towards savings rather than spending. In last decade or so, however, this behavior is changing due to increasing wages, improved lifestyle, and improved purchasing power parity (PPP), exposure to western culture and easy availability of global technologies in India. With low dependency ratio, healthy savings and investment rates, and increasing integration into the global economy, many global companies are investing in India not only to meet the demand from Indian market but also to cater to global market by exporting out of India. Indigenous technologies that are at par with global standards are available in India with much less investments. This is helping exporters to supply goods out of India at very competitive rates and still maintain their margins. Indian is evolving as one of the key global industrial hubs. However, sustainability is one area where Indian market is still much behind global markets. The Indian market is still price sensitive to a large extent and investments in energy efficiency, sustainability are still lower. This offers great opportunities to technology leaders like Ingersoll Rand and many others to undertake awareness drive on a larger scale and offer products that are more energy efficient.

Q. What are your strategies to improve the your company’s position in Indian & global market as well?
We have a three-fold strategy that we follow in our company, First one being ‘Increasing Market Reach’. We focus on increasing our reach in the market as we feel there is an underlying growth potential that can be tapped and achieved. Second is ‘Product Leadership’, which comes by studying customer needs, behavior, and then developing innovative products to meet their requirements and thereby lead the market. Thirdly, ‘Operational Excellence’ which is achieved by constantly improving on the time to market delivery and providing high quality products to the customer.

Q. According to you what are the factors affecting to your business?
The factors affecting our business are largely macro-economic like – the prevailing global macro-economic situation, investments in infrastructure, new capacity enhancement and expansion by manufacturing industries, and overall scenario of capital goods in the world. Moreover, foreign exchange also plays an important role with our business since we are present globally which affects EXIM big time. Lastly, factors related to cash flow, ability to pay and invest on time also affects our kind of business considering we are into capital goods space and liquidity of the customer company becomes very important while deciding the purchase of such products.

Q. What is your vision for your company for coming year?
Our Vision
A world of sustainable progress and enduring results Ingersoll Rand is committed to India and is implementing strategies for product and design innovation for Industrial Technologies; Food Safety; Energy Efficiency and Sustainability. Our workplace emphasizes the values of Integrity, Respect, Teamwork, Innovation and Courage. Our Brand Promise, Vision and Values are the language that unifies us as an organization and creates a common purpose: Advancing the quality of life by creating and sustaining safe, comfortable and efficient environments.

Q. According to what are the challenges & issues you need to address that are related to your industry.
The focus of the industry is moving towards the quality of air considering critical applications in Food & Beverages, Pharmaceuticals and Power sector. As this requirement becomes critical in deciding the selection of the air compressor, our best-in-class Oil-free technology provides customers with the peace of mind that they look for. Also, the industry has moved towards higher energy efficiency (low life cycle cost or operating cost) and lower maintenance (high reliability), for offsetting the capital cost which is incurred on the machines. The new wave in the market is the Heat Recovery Unit which is gaining importance due to its feature of recovering the heat energy from the compressor to generate hot water for various applications like boiler pre-feed, space heating, sanitary purposes and any other process applications.