Growing mkt aids Suprajit log Rs-100 crore turnover

SUPRAJIT Engineering, the listed cables and instruments maker, has crossed the magical Rs 100-crore turnover mark last fiscal.

The growing domestic automotive market and increased focus on exports has helped Suprajit speed up revenues since its initial turnover of Rs 30 lakh in 1987, Mr Ajith Kumar Rai, managing director of the company, told ET.

Suprajit is on an export overdrive to capitalise on the huge market for off-the-road cable applications that countries like the US promise. Mr. Rai said there are opportunity to sell cables to makers of golf cart, washing machines and excavator.

The present environment is condusive for exports, he said. Reasons being the growing popularity of brand India Inc, cost cutting pressures pushing global automobile makers to source from countries like India and their de-risk strategy of buying components from multiple vendors across Asia, instead of suppliers from one or two countries.

Mr. Rai said big automobile makers, in tune with their cost cutting strategy, are pushing their tier-one component suppliers to source from India. To gain foothold in markets like the US, Suprajit is looking for alliane with mid-sized component suppliers. It is also open to acquiring, if an appropriate opportunity arises. Haing a local presence in the US for front-end sales, logistics, technical discussions is mandatory, he said.

Early last year, Suprajit announced a joint venture with Carclo UK, under which CTP Gills Cables, a Carclo company would outsource cables from a new facility in Bangalore being set up by the partners. Mr. Rai said such type of alliances would help Suprajit to grow topline and aid its export efforts.

The low-cost manufacturing advantage that locations in Europe such as Hungary and the Czech Republic have is expected to cease with them moving to EU. This, he said, is expected to help India as some manufacturing facilities in these countries would logically move to newer low-cost destinations like India.

Suprajit’s ccapacity to make over 40 million automotive cables and its supplier relationship with leading autootive OEMs makes it the largest cable maker in the country, he said. Suprajit in 2002, acquired Shah Concabs, a cable maker, through which it has gained manufacturing presence in Wapi.