FCC

We are seeing capability to double sales in the near term

2019-03-01

Over the last 18 years, Nuvoco Vistas Corp (formerly Lafarge India) has emerged as one of the major players in India through various greenfield and brownfield projects. The company?s plants in Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Jharkhand, Rajasthan and West Bengal account for an installed cement capacity of 10.92 mtpa. The company also has a pan-India presence in the ready-mix concrete business, with close to 70 plants across the country. Its aggregate business is based in north India with a capacity of 240 tonne per hour. What?s more, to undertake R&D activities to develop innovative solutions specific to unique requirements, the company established its Construction Development and Innovation Centre (CDIC) in Mumbai in early 2012. The centre endeavours to bring solutions closer to the market, accelerate the process and build up locally through systems development.

While Pranav Desai, Head - CDIC and New Product Development, Nuvoco Vistas Corp, along with his team, recently took the CW team on a detailed tour at CDIC, spread across 17,000 sq ft, to explain its working and activities, Madhumita Basu, Chief of Marketing, Innovation, Strategy and IT, Nuvoco Vistas Corp, shared insights on the company and its future plans in conversation with SHRIYAL SETHUMADHAVAN.

CDIC clearly speaks of the company?s focus on R&D. Please tell us about the company?s investment in this area.
We are not really chasing a particular percentage of the turnover. It is not about being among the top five research companies and investing a certain part of the business into this. Our focus is on building a robust agenda for the centre. Concrete is a finished product, and being in the construction space, the genesis of CDIC has largely been the concrete space. So the centre does not only look at just the material side of it, but the placement and finishing, and ensuring it is an end-to-end solution. Typically, in that case, CDIC is about 0.5 per cent of our concrete business top-line. Additionally, the centre has also been bringing easy ready-to-market solutions like microfiber cement. This is a unique product in the industry not only in terms of what the fibre does for the cement, but lends testimony to the calibre of high speed operations of the organisation.

While the company supplies to projects pan-India, it has only one CDIC centre based in Mumbai. Does this pose a challenge?
The nuances are different in every place in India. Infrastructure projects are crucial today; yet 65 per cent of cement goes into Individual Home Builder (IHB) operations. Certainly, in our blueprint, in the next two years, we are looking at a satellite to this centre out of our concrete plants. Having received clearance for two, we are trying to push for another centre as well. So we are working around two centres between Delhi, Chennai and Kolkata this year. We need to operate closer to the customer and this will help in quick sampling, leading to a better interface with the manufacturing team. Also, at times, there has been a fair bit of delay between the concept of an idea and speed to market. The satellites would help address this issue.

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