“A Pioneering Tech Leader”

In the year 2011, when Ravindra Nagarkar shouldered the responsibility as CEO of Kalyani Technoforge (KTFL), it was just an ordinary forging company. Kalyani Technoforge was doing business with a single Indian domestic customer, placing the company in a risky position. Mr. Nagarkar decided to formulate a strategy with forward-thinking integration for the purpose of reducing the company’s risk. During the initial implementation period, the company made several small acquisitions, thereby allowing him to expand the business from serving one customer to multiple customers. His innovative actions resulted in to increased product offerings in KTFL’s portfolio such as gears, shafts, assemblies, and sub-assemblies that led to an exponential growth in the company’s value and success. As his strategy continued to take form, he began increasing export business, and reducing KTFL’s dependency on domestic customer base. He has impressively increased the export content of KTFL to more than 50% in his tenure. By way of Mr. Nagarkar’s significant contributions, Kalyani Technoforge is no longer seen as just another Indian manufacturing company but as a highly regarded global market leader for automotive components.

Along the journey of growing KTFL, Mr. Nagarkar has always played his part in being a mentor to the external upcoming organizations as well. One of the budding enterprises that Mr. Nagarkar has been serving as a mentor to is Tork, an electric motorcycle startup located in India. He has empowered Tork through continuous support, thus allowing them to launch the first-ever electric bike in Indian history. He and the Tork team have worked hand-in-hand over the inception phase of the company and intend to scale the business by setting up innovative micro-factories across the country to localize manufacturing of Tork bikes.

Among the countless lessons that Mr. Nagarkar has learnt during his impressive career, there are two that reign supreme in his mind. The first is, “Value creation can only be done if you have competent, passionate, and like-minded people around you.” Kalyani Technoforge team holds a special part in Mr. Nagarkar’s heart, as some of its leaders today have worked with Mr. Nagarkar for more than 10-15 years, and many are regarded more as friends than as colleagues. With this deeper connection, they are able to more easily align on their purposes and thought processes, creating a positive work environment for the team. Secondly, Mr. Nagarkar recognizes that in today’s business world “you cannot work without a having high level of technology, and only technology can take you to the next level.” People and technology are the founding pillars of an engineering organization. When a company has the right people holding and sharing the right kind of diversified knowledge, they instantly have a built-in competitive advantage.

Mr. Nagarkar has always encouraged innovation in the manufacturing, giving Kalyani Technoforge a competitive edge against their industry peers. A good example is creating an electric vehicle motor shaft and gear manufacturing facility which today supplies components to most of the Electric Vehicle companies across the globe. This investment was made three years ahead of time when he did not have any business in this field. Now, these facilities are running at full capacity, and KTFL has to further invest multiple folds than what they had initially invested. Due to his foresight, Kalyani Technoforge has literally and figuratively been forging ahead of its competitors.

Mr. Nagarkar is a firm believer of the use of Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) practices in manufacturing. All his KTFL facilities use TPM methodology to establish defect-free manufacturing processes. Given Quality is tracked throughout the manufacturing process it has helped KTFL to maintain zero PPM supply to most of their customers leading to high customer satisfaction. The below Quality Management pillar proactive approach is precisely what is used:

1. Setting zero failure condition.

2. Advance countermeasure on defects.

3. Focus on potential quality defects.

4. Inspecting & measuring conditions in time series.

5. Maintain process in the standard value range.

KTFL actively reviews all their processes with the aim to perfect their well running assets and strengthen those that do not meet their high standards. By evaluating how each characteristic of their manufacturing lines can be improved, whether major or minor, the overall quality of their product is increased. Customer satisfaction is critical to KTFL team and so everyone makes it a point to visit the customer, witness their assembly lines, identify touchpoint parameters related to assembly, and provide prevention and detection type control to all the components being supplied to the customer. This helps to improve customer relationships and instill trust in the brand. Using these methods, over the years Kalyani Technoforge has managed to maintain minimal customer complaints and has considerably reduced the IHR rejection.

In an effort to clean up the image of the automotive forging business, formerly referred to as being “3-D” i.e., Dirty, Dark, and Dangerous, Mr. Nagarkar has brought smart technology and TPM Practices to the forefront of KTFL’s vision. The four major foundational principles which are highly regarded in all KTFL facilities and subsidiaries are hard work, team building, people development, and system development. The success of KTFL in implementing these principles at every level can be seen by the numerous TPM excellence awards which the company has received. The crux of KTFL’s impressive progress is due to the involvement of root level employees into the company’s goals and processes, thus creating a highly purpose-driven organization from the ground-level up. Though the idea of viewing the company in such a wholistic manner is revolutionary, no other forging company in India has achieved so many TPM Awards.

Looking towards the future with Mr. Nagarkar’s leadership, Kalyani Technoforge has invested in various futuristic industries and technologies like 3D printing, electric vehicle, and other green technologies. With the brilliant vision and focus of Mr. Nagarkar, Kalyani Technoforge is destined to be a sustainable organization looking at some promising growth in the coming years. IE