Pricol to foray into NPD services

Pricol Technologies Limited (PTL), the engineering design services arm of the Rs 650-crore Pricol group, is planning to foray into New Product Development (NPD) services.

With this, the company is shifting its focus from engineering services to technological services.

Speaking to Business Standard, A S Ramaseshan, chief operating officer, PTL, said: "Banking on the group's 30 years of product engineering experience in developing products for the automotive industry, we decided to form this NPD division".

Though the company was not restricting itself to any particular industry segment, its focus would be on projects based on electro"�mechanical, mechanical and electronics, areas where the company has got domain expertise, he added.

PTL would take up complete new product development on a turnkey basis and offer product or market research and benchmarking, styling, concept development, design feasibility study, detailed design, Computer Aided Engineering (CAE), test and validation, rapid prototyping, tooling and production.

Ramaseshan said that in the area of product styling, PTL had a joint venture with Italian styling major, Carcerano Srl.

The joint venture called Carcerano Pricoltech India Private Limited, was formed three years ago. Carcerano would provide the technical expertise while the design and testing services would be carried out by Pricol.

The NPD group comprises 65 members from various streams of engineering. It is currently involved in multiple projects from Europe and the US.

"Though the current focus of the NPD group is projects for international clients through our sales network (in Stuttgart, Germany and in Chicago, USA), we are also planning to extend the technology support for Indian Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) and engineering houses in the near future," he said.

PTL's current order book status in the NPD area is about $30 lakh which is likely to be executed in the next 24 - 30 months. The company clocked a turnover of Rs 5 crore last fiscal. It hopes to double it this fiscal through its new services.