Process matters

INTERVIEW: Jitendra Singh

'Our company has always focused on a single entity'

Kudos Chemie Limited is one of India's largest producers of synthetic caffeine. Set up in 1994, it has grown from a 100 tpa capacity unit to a 1350 tpa capacity one in the last one decade creating a niche for its quality caffeine products used in the beverages, pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries.

The company has major expansion plans. The two-pronged strategy for backward and forward Integration, says its Founder & CEO, Jitendra Singh, will catapult Kudos into one of the top five caffeine producer companies in the world. He shares his plans with us. Excerpts.

Does your company have a marketing and branding strategy. Can you spell it out?

As the old saying goes "What is easy to make is difficult to sell and vice versa". The potential lies in the making not in the selling, and making is all about processes "� in other words "The Technology".

Technology is the most important driving force behind any enterprise's sustained growth and success. Since its inception, our company has focused on a single entity and has concentrated on developing the process to derive better routes and efficiencies. Our research is dedicated to excel in what we produce.

Is the SME sector favourably adapting to the change demanded in these times?

With the crumbling of tariff walls, markets are flooded with global products that have clearly put pressure on the domestic industry.

The domestic player needs to build and fortify its intrinsic strengths and provide total customer satisfaction which again can only be derived by revamping the state of the technology and bringing it at par with the other players in the world. Therefore, there is an urgent need to focus on their area of operation and scale new technology frontiersdomestically.

What policy changes would you expect from the government?

If you ask me the best policy "� the government has no business to be in business. It can ideally work as a facilitator, if it so desires. I think we have a fantastic Chinese example in front of us. Here are a few suggestions: Manufacturing exporters should be immune to incidence of local taxes and duties and should be facilitated express clearance on all operational issues.

In short they should be provided with all the incentives as detailed under the SEZ policy irrespective of location; build more dry ports and populate cargo trains particularly to land locked area's to facilitate quick movement; Do away with all export incentives and simply provide inputs at zero tax and duties; and facilitate and subsidise world class technology to the SME sector and promote cluster manufacturing to ensure efficient deployment of resources so that this sector substantially contributes to the export basket.

What impact will it have on the relationship between big players and SMEs once a specific marketing strategy comes into play?

The Japanese business model is very interesting as this has exemplary networking and the Indian industry needs to learn from this phenomenon.

As I have already said, the best strategy for SMEs is to form a production chain that facilitates each enterprise to focus on its core strengths and derive the best value from its area of operation.

Outsourcing is the `stem cell' for SME growth and I think this is something which the SME could cherish now as this was not prevalent in the past, therefore, I see a lot of growth precipitating for the domestic SME in the near future.

"Technology is the most important driving force behind any enterprise's sustained growth and success. The potential lies in the process, not selling"
Jitendra Singh, Founder & CEO, Kudos Chemie Limited