Contributed by Mitesh Agrawal
Mr. C S Prakash started “Pushpak Industrial Services” from almost zero investment and today “Pushpak” is approximate INR 10 crores company. He, a diploma holder in mechanical engineering who comes from a very moderate family background, claims “Being Ethical and Constant in nature” is the success mantra behind Pushpak. Pushpak Industrial Services, incorporated as Pushpak Products India Pvt. Ltd, is now having three different lines of businesses – Manufacturing of Industrial & Office Furniture, Ground & Material Handling Equipments and Electrochemical Process on Spacecraft components (Anodizing). It has customer base from defense sector to MNC like ISRO, HAL, NAL, BEL, Toyota, Bosch, etc.
Like others Mr. Prakash too started doing Apprenticeship Training with Hindustan Aeronautic Limited (HAL) in Bangalore for a stipend of INR 500. But there was big difference among others and him during apprenticeship. He was doing his apprenticeship so seriously that he started working continuously for 2 shifts (from 6am to 11pm) so that he would be able to learn more than others. After completion of his apprenticeship, realizing his talent his well wishers in HAL recommended him to start his own business. At that time, due to poor financial condition, he did not even have money to open a bank account.
But as the saying goes, “Where there is a will, there is a way”. Few of his well wishers opened him a bank account, gave him space for day to day operations and not only machines to operate but also first order of welding and gas cutting rate contract from HAL. Foundation of Pushpak Industrial Services was laid.
And “Sustained efforts lead to sustainable results”. Toyota Groups, L&T, HAL, BEL, NAL, ISRO, Bosch are few of their regular customers and Pushpak has also started to venture in export markets. No compromise on quality is Pushpak’s priority in each order delivery. That’s the reason, ISO certified for Zero Rejection, Pushpak is being able to retain their first customers till date. It was also involved in few of the world renowned projects like “Edu-Sat” and “Chandrayaan”. Pushpak’s aim is to become Rs. 100 crores company by 2012 and go for an IPO in coming 5-6 years.
But “Rome was not built in a day” - This all could have not been achieved in mere few months and without the endless toil that Mr. Prakash has put in. The person who struggled to open a bank account how could have paid salaries to his employees!? After starting in 1992, for quite some time he worked in HMT factory during second shift and night shift in VIPRA Machine Tools, just to pay his employees.
Mr. Prakash is the man who never let down his spirit of entrepreneurship and kept on growing without compromising his ethics and values.
In 1993, with-in two years of setting up the enterprise he had lost all the rate contracts. Without any revenue generation activity for some time, it was a very challenging time for Pushpak. All he was left with man-power and he started technical man-power contracting which grew from 8 technicians to 450 by 2003. This not only helped Pushpak survive through those tough times but also provided foothold in various organizations which boosted the core fabrication business over the time.
But that was not the end to Mr. Prakash’s problems. In 1999-2000, fabrication activity at most of the clients was stopped. But, Pushpak did not stop. Mr. Prakash had a plan ready. Pushpak immediately diversified into furniture manufacturing utilizing the existing fabrication facilities. As a result, now Pushpak has a strong hold in industrial and office furniture manufacturing with manufacturing capacity of 3,000 cabinets and chairs both per month.
In 2007, Chandrayan, much hyped Lunar Landing project of India, was not an easy task with project being so sensitive but he had the incessant willingness and commitment to carry on and result being an appreciation certificate from ISRO for 0 defects for Chandrayan project.
During the time of crisis, he always leads his organisation from front and sets example in front of others. Mr. Prakash summarizes his feeling as “Whenever difficulties or crises came, we never neglected our core business of fabrication. We added additional activities related to our field only using the existing facilities, infrastructure and man power. If any additional machineries or facilities were required only then we added. We have always been upgrading the new technologies belonging to our business field. And as on today we have very strong foundation to "PUSHPAK" though we still have to construct professional building as per the market and customer needs. We achieved only 2 to 3% of my vision, still 98% to be achieved in future business journey.”
There are problems for which Mr. Prakash is looking solution. In real time market scenario, they are also challenged from the competitors. “Sometime Pushpak faces competition from small organisations which only do trading and claim to be manufacturer and from big organisations which have huge economies of scale for reducing cost.” Another difficulty is that “It is not cost effective to execute small quantity orders and sometimes even after making the design and prototype there is no commitment for a bulk order and you have to fight with open competition”, he adds. High excise duty continues to be another element eating up the profit margins for Pushpak.
Mr. Prakash’s views on dynamics between Govt & MSMEs
Mr. Prakash firmly believes that MSMEs have to be educated by Govt. for all the schemes and options available for them. “Every SME should register itself under SSI. Then govt. should take the responsibility of circulating notification of latest updates to all of the registered SSIs so that each and every SSI will be having update information about various schemes and options”, suggests Mr. Prakash. “SMEs themselves are also responsible for their bad condition because just for the sake of earning money nobody goes to internet and do research about the facilities available for them by Govt”, He adds.
Interview with owner of Pushpak, which has registered phenomenal growth of more than 50% in the previous year and has set aggressive targets for 2012 in these bad times, and a successful entrepreneur Mr. Prakash throws light on the following rules of thumb for MSMEs:
Being opportunist is must for sustaining business and diversifying the risk as evident from “I work on opportunity basis. If I see an opportunity which can be in-cashed very easily in near future, in no time I will start working on it and mold myself and the team for in-cashing that opportunity by proper planning and excellent execution”, adds Mr. Prakash. Also, it is important to create opportunities at the same time, as “Opportunities are for opportunists”.
Being skilled is not the must to take-off, but becomes essential to fly higher. This is an area where Mr. Prakash thinks that he needs to nourish his skills for growing the organization. Mr. Prakash is totally first generation entrepreneur without any prior knowledge of business management. He believes that he was able to bring Pushpak up to this level by utilizing his skills. But from this level to another level, he wants to have knowledge of entire management process. He has already registered himself for the course in IIM-B for Entrepreneurship and Family Business Management. The basic knowledge set that he deemed necessary for growing the business further includes:
i. Procure Funding – VC funding, Equity,
ii. People management – Leadership, Employee motivation
iii. Sales & Marketing, E-commerce and Exporting
iv. Accounting & Business planning
v. Management skills – Supply Chain Management, Product Life Cycle Management
Need of mentor cannot be undervalued. He says, “Mr. K.G. Dutta Prasad, who is the financial advisor to me, is always a great well wisher as well. He has always helped me in defining goals and making strategies for near and long term future. Along with managing finances he had helped me a lot in operational aspects too. He has been with me side by side from the very early years of the Pushpak and had been a mentor to me in resolving all my difficulties. I strongly advocate the need of a mentor to support the professional and personal growth”.
Benchmarking is an important exercise to build a strong organisation. “I too had a big target for my company, but I have always set realistic short terms goals and milestones based on benchmarking with my next bigger competitor. As, I kept on advancing to achieve milestones I also set my benchmarks to the next higher levels.”
Maintaining a good credit history helps in difficult times to procure the required financing. “Company is having excellent track record of clearing liability and good relations with banks. Therefore, banks are ready to extend new lines of credit even at this time when most of the banks are reluctant.” Also, “Due to Pushpak’s strong relations with vendors (majority from India), vendors have good amount of faith in us to give more credit”, which helps Pushpak when the accounts receivables are not settled in time.
Don’t say no to outsourcing. Companies that want to maintain their focus into main business can outsource the support activities like sales and marketing, IT etc. instead of building in-house capabilities. Whereas in-house functioning offers more control, more often than not outsourcing is a profitable proposition, because of the economies of scale the vendor/ supplier is able to offer the services at a lower cost than in-house functioning. Mr. Prakash says, Pushpak is “looking to expand its sales and marketing staff or looking to outsource its options to other companies so that Pushpak can just remain manufactures. These all options are still in pipeline which has to be shortlisted.”
His final suggestion to SMEs:
Be firm to your business and direction. Do not go for two things in parallel which disturb both and finally both of them will never be justified.
Mr. Prakash shares his idol as Mr. Lakshmi Mittal and wants Pushpak to be a leading organization recognized globally for Industrial Material Handling Solutions and Furniture Systems. He gives credit of all his success to his friends and well wishers who helped him throughout his journey and he wants to thank them all for their continuous support.
Mr. Prakash is one of the two Indian entrepreneurs selected by the Asian Productivity Organization for Honda Foundation Joint Conference for Entrepreneurship in Asia held at Tokyo, Japan in 2008.
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