
For any company to grow, the interplay of few essential elements need to happen, says B Santhanam, President and Managing Director, Flat Glass (South Asia, Malaysia and Egypt), at Saint-Gobain India Private Limited. "These elements include a good manufacturing base, a good set of people, an innovation agenda, and a market that's growing," says Santhanam. Happily for him, he is seeing all play in sync for his company in India, says the company president.
French multinational's Chairman Pierre-Andre de Chalendar had recently said the company is seeing India as a fastest growing market and hopes to triple revenue in a decade. "It was logical to expect, given the way the company has grown, and seeing the growth in its key customer market segments," says Santhanam, adding that the company was doing well in India as a group.
"In the past 20 years (the company entered India in 1996), we have doubled (revenue) every 4.5 years." From a low base, he says, the company is close to a billion dollar entity in India. "In many of the businesses we operate, we are leaders both in terms of market position and in our ability to influence the ecosystem," says Santhanam, who is also the Chairman of Manufacturing and Digital Excellence (MADE) subcommittee of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), Southern region.
So what gives him the confidence to triple the revenue in a decade? "It is fairly obvious. If India is growing at 7 per cent, and many of the businesses we are in - habitat or construction and real estate, which is two thirds of the business with the balance one third in the automotive and engineering - all are growing at a faster rate than the GDP growth," he said.
Even the automotive sector is bouncing back after two-three years of a slowdown, he says. On the company's innovation agenda, he says: "Of the total patent registrations that the company did globally last year, five per cent came from the innovation centre of the company at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras Research Park." The centre is only about five years old. The company is also in the process of setting up a centre of excellence for digitisation in the manufacturing space.
Santhanam leads the flat glass business for the company in South Asia, Egypt and Malaysia. About 60 per cent of Saint-Gobain's activity in India is the flat glass business, in which it has invested significantly. By the end of 2018, it would have invested over Rs 5000 crore in flat glass alone, which again, as we could gather from Santhanam, only adds to the company's hopes and expectations from India.