Gangadhara Rao B | Vice President- Electrical & Infra Division
With a network of 45 world leaders in home textiles and apparel technology spread across many continents, 15 modern offices across India employing over 500 professionals, and over 25,000 satisfied customers, all in a span of over 3 decades, speaks volumes about the success and growth record of India’s foremost technology and services provider, IIGM. IIGM has the ability to service clientele across the spectrum from small companies to the largest groups across India, Middle East and parts of South-East Asia.
Q1. Tell us about IIGM services for the garment industry? And how’s your journey so far?
IIGM has been into this business for the last 40 years and is the largest supplier of Industrial garment machines in the world. We have a strong team of over 500 employees across India. From time to time, we try to identify the best technologies followed across the world class manufacturing setups and cater to the Indian market. We do a lot of research before getting tied up with any company in terms of the technicality, deliveries, market acceptance and once we get associated, we make a confirmed success story. We are continuously growing year on year, and we see the growth getting exponential as we are diversifying into different domains year on year.
Q2. How has the textile industry been doing for the last two years? And what major changes have been seen?
During last financial year, the textile industry was slow. However, during the pandemic, we have set up a couple of manufacturing setups in PPE and mask manufacturing. As you know this is a labour-intensive industry, it was really tough for the factories to pull the people back to work. Now the factories are not only restricted to machinery and automation, but they are also giving importance to give a clean and hygiene ambience. Cooling & ventilation is very vital now. We have brought in certain solutions which are very very economical and gives an excellent ambience with and air changers of more than 35 air changers per hour and gives you a comparative 10˚C temperature reduction.
The market during this financial year has really bounced back pretty well. We have set up a couple of very large factories. Factories for 1lakh square -feet were very few previously but we see numerous projects of this size quite often now. We see many large factories already completed and under construction and no doubt the Indian manufacturing sector is getting bigger and bigger.
Q3.How do you meet the business challenges during this COVID time?
Initially of course it was tough for us as we work also confused, we are in the pandemic cruise. However, as our core strength is we have the best team available across India and our solution diversity into different domains we quickly back into normal stage. In fact, we came up stronger. Thanks to the work from home concept, many of the companies have and are setting up or expanding their white space. The data centers are getting very key for them. People are no longer using cabling systems even for the smaller data centers and bus bars have become a primal requirement for them. Even the lab equipment is connected without any cabling. Further this domain is growing and growing.
As I told you about the larger factories, this is not happening only in textile or garment Industries alone, But across all the domains are emerging with such huge setups like data centers, electronic equipment manufacturing units, automobile and granite manufacturing are also elevated to the next level. India is growing.
Q4. Tell us about your product portfolio in the electrical & Infrastructure?
Electrical bus bar distribution system is our core solutions catering to garment & textile factories, Office building, malls, hospitals, automobile, data centers etc. Starting from the transformer and DG till the lighting, we are designing with bus bar solutions.
In the Infrastructure we mainly focus on lighting solutions and cooling & ventilation. For lighting we have sky lighting solutions to bring in the natural lighting during daytime without any artificial lighting. The skylights do not bring in any heat inside the factory but only diffused lighting maintaining the required uniform lux level at the factory floor. Cooling & ventilation is really getting popular nowadays. It’s very difficult or not economical to have air conditioning in a large factory building. But the process and principle of air conditioning could be split, and we can get the 10˚C difference with only 25% of the cost and only 15% of the power consumption when compared to air conditioning. We can design the evaporative cooling which is synchronized with the proper ventilation system and air changers to throw the air out.
If any of these solutions are not designed well, it’s just a dead investment and of no use at all. In fact, it may lead to certain adverse effects.
Q5. How EAE technologies meet electrical products demand in the India market?
EAE has all that is required for an electrical distribution and is a one stop solution provider. It has a range starting from 25 Amps till 6300 Amps, IP 55 till IP 68, underfloor busbars, double run bus bars, lab bus bars and what not. The Indian market is getting matured year on year and only quality products would survive in the future. I have seen so many bus bar manufacturers coming to the Indian market, and they are no more, in fact certain of them are very big establishments behind them. Busbar distribution is not about just the supply alone, it’s much more than just four conductors.
Q6. Brief us about the IIGM-EAE success story?
IIGM & EAE, both are forty plus years old companies. Both are family-owned business, and both the management has a common mindset of giving the right solution & commitment to serve the clients. Same has been driven from top to bottom of the organization and this makes the success story. EAE is more focused on the innovations and brings in new developments year on year in the product range. IIGM has a large pool of excellent engineers handling EAE business in India. Starting from the design, site measurements, Installations, commissioning, testing and even maintaining the bus bars. We give the client the comfort zone that they are in the safest hands. This is what any client’s requirement is, and this makes IIGM – EAE a real success story.
