The demands of the market are shifting towards faster deliveries, says Tushar Mehendale, MD, Electromech

01 Jun 2018 Editorial Team

India is seeing an all round growth in the market for material handling equipment. "The investment cycle has picked up steam since Q3 FY2018, and we are seeing a good traction on the enquiry generation front," says Tushar Mehendale, Managing Director, Electromech. He adds that the trend is moving towards customers setting up state-of-the-art facilities with higher capacities and levels of productivity. "Hence, the product preference is shifting more towards the premium-end of the market for both, overhead cranes as well as forklifts and warehousing equipment," adds Mehendale, as he shares more on the company's offerings. Tell us about the company's growth. We are seeing a healthy increase in our order book. The demands of the market are shifting towards faster deliveries as well. This is keeping everyone on their toes. Elaborate on your offerings for the market. ElectroMech is a full spectrum material handling solutions company. Be it tower cranes required at the time of construction or overhead cranes required for inplant handling or lift trucks used for ground handling, we have products for every requirement. We offer customers a holistic solution for their material handling requirement that provides maximum value in terms of higher productivity and reliability. With our partnership with Abus Cranesystems of Germany, we are able to offer customers top-notch, standardised workshop handling cranes. Our partnership with Hyster Yale Group enables us to offer world-class lift trucks for on-ground material movement and warehousing applications. Yale has a legacy of more than 100 years in the forklifts industry and is a leading global brand that manufactures in excess of 100,000 lift trucks a year. While the total estimated size of the Indian lift truck market is around 14,000! With such a solid legacy and technical leadership, we are able to offer products that rank extremely high on reliability, productivity and ease of use metrics. Our equipment ranges from simple battery operated pallet truck to fully automated very narrow aisle (VNA) stackers that make high-rise warehouses a breeze to operate. With the help of our solutions selling approach and our Warehouse Simulator, our clients benefit from optimising their warehouse layouts and their lift truck requirements. Backed by the renowned service support of ElectroMech's service arm, Cranedge, clients can be assured of our prompt after-sales support through our network of more than 150 service engineers. How do you view international companies setting up shop in India? India has historically been an underserved market in terms of technological offerings. As a result, there was an emergence of jugaad type of equipment in all spheres of machinery including material handling equipment. While such low-tech products do satisfy a small niche of the market, one needs to realise that the market needs are changing by leaps and bounds. The only way in which these needs can be catered to is by utilising latest technology and products offering high levels of productivity, reliability and safety. So, as we see demand for the material handling equipment migrating from low-end products to high-end premium products, global majors would obviously like to partake in this market. With the ElectroMech-Yale partnership, we are in a unique position. At ElectroMech, we understand the local needs on account of our experience of being in the Indian industry for close to 40 years. With Yale, we are able to back this local knowledge with the global expertise. In the end, the customer benefits immensely from this power-packed combination. Today, we are positioned as a unique company in the Indian industry that offers such a value proposition.