MUMBAI: A picture of Archimedes hangs on the wall above Purushottam Agwan's chair in his no-frills office. Sporting a starched white shirt and impeccably coiffured hair, Agwan speaks with the poise of a man who knows his footing. That poise is understandable, given the 40-year-old journey of his firm.
R K Dutt Concerns was the brainchild of Dutta Keshav Sathe and was founded in Thane in 1967.
It was the result of Sathe's anguish about not having been allowed to experiment with his school laboratory equipment.
He did not want other kids to be denied that opportunity as well, so R K Dutt Concerns came out with easy-to-use lab kits for different age groups to encourage scientific rigour among students. The product clicked, but Sathe decided he needed more business. So, he and his team developed battery eliminators. Sathe did anything the companies wanted, including painting a safety board.
Meanwhile, in Nagpur, Agwan finished his engineering course and joined Larsen & Toubro in 1976 as a graduate engineering trainee. In the early eighties, Sathe told Agwan, by now his son-in-law, to put his expertise to better use in his Rs 6 lakh-firm. He overcame his hesitation and took the plunge.
He does not rue it one bit to this day. “Our breakthrough came when Colour Chem came to us asking for level indicators for their chemicals as the ones they had were faulty,” says Agwan.
Though the state of things improved, R K Dutt Concerns was lacking in marketing know-how. As fate would have it, an adman came along and persuaded the company to publish a Rs 15,000-advertisement in a leading daily, which brought in as many as many as 230 enquiries, including from Premier Automobile.
“We then decided we would do only level indication-related work,” Agwan adds. After the first wave of liberalisation of 1991, Agwan realised his product range would be eaten from the top by multinationals and from the bottom by Indian firms that built cheaper alternatives.
As a result, in 1992, the company signed an agreement with the Swiss company Helios to jointly manufacture level-measurement instruments. The marriage ended when Helios was taken over by the Eletta Group of Sweden in 2000, the same year that Sathe hung up his boots.
During 1996-2000, the chemical engineering industry witnessed an unprecedented slowdown due to dumping by China. R K Dutt Concerns was no exception. However, it used this as opportunity to consolidate and redesign its products to make them competitive. The move has worked — the company's present turnover of Rs 5 crore is triple its 2000 figures.
Moreover, there are two other group firms, Igatwin Polymers and Tansa Equipment, each of which has revenues of half a million rupees. Agwan had a role to play in the creation of both the firms, which are now owned and managed by his relatives.
Talking about the current market scenario, Agwan says, “The last three months have been very gloomy; consultation and project orders have come down. Still, we hope to double our turnover in the next three years.”
If the ride ahead were to be tough, it is sure not to faze Agwan, simply because he has seen much worse before.
g_seetharaman@dnaindia.net
