What are we commemorating today?
• Thirtyfive years of productive enterprise
• Thirtyfive years of partnership with leading corporations from around the world
• Thirtyfive years of dedicated customer support
• Thirtyfive years of excellent team work and finally,
• Thirtyfive years of friendships.
N Sankar
Extract from N Sankar’s speech during the 35th anniversary celebrations of Sanmar Engineering on 1 July 2011.
Today we celebrate over three decades of fruitful business endeavour. Sanmar Engineering had its beginnings in Durametallic India Limited, which incidentally was the first company I personally founded thirtyfive years ago. It was a venture between a twenty seven year old with not much practical business experience, and a small family owned company from Kalamazoo, Michigan, to manufacture a fairly obscure product known as a Mechanical Seal, in India. Please remember this was before the advent of the software era, which brought along teenagers starting businesses and becoming overnight billionaires. In the early 70’s, twenty seven was still considered young.
Durametallic Corporation at that time was primarily operating in the US with some small operations in the Europe and Mexico, and it was a giant step for them to go all the way to India, and that too in a minority Joint Venture. All I can say is I am glad I was young enough to have the energy to persevere, and a thick enough skin to take many rebuffs. My friends, Clark Hurlbert and Tom Haan, who are here today will remember those days, I trust with the same fond memories of what were to become Sanmar Engineering’s first few baby steps.
The fact that I had a great team led by my good friend, the late SR Seshadri, and we had some great hearted people in Durametallic, like Paul Jackson and his colleagues, who were completely open with their technology and support, led to a flying start for Durametallic India.
Today Sanmar Engineering consists of 7 legal entities, 5 Joint Ventures and 12 Business Units spread across 5 locations in India and the Americas. The products cover Mechanical Seals, Rupture Discs, Fluorocarbon Lined/Sleeved Plug Valves, High Performance Butterfly Valves, Pressure Seal Valves, and Relief Valves. It also includes a Steel Castings business, with manufacturing operations we established in India, and which we acquired in the US and Mexico, which collectively would be one of the largest in the world in this category.
While the products primarily service the process, power, nuclear and similar industries, the steel castings business, apart from being a backward integration for the products business, also supplies to the Construction, Mining, Transit, and Military sectors. Most of Sanmar Engineering’s products are clear market leaders in India, and its service network covers every nook and corner of the country.
As I said earlier, all these businesses are expected to clock sales of about Rs 1750 crore this year. The future also looks bright, and we expect to keep growing organically at over 20% at least for the next fi ve years. Apart from this, we are looking at other products from our partners’ range and elsewhere which can boost this even further.
We have been lucky in being associated over the years with some of the fi nest corporations from all over the world. And not just associating, but having very open and productive collaborations where both partners give openly and transparently for the success of the joint venture.
More by experience rather than by planning, Sanmar has developed a Joint Venture management philosophy which has obviously served it well. How else could we have kept such partners working with us for such long periods?
Having talked so much about the various reasons for Sanmar Engineering’s progress over these three and a half decades, if you would ask me to pick one fact above all others that was responsible, I would unhesitatingly choose our great fortune in having been able to collect such extraordinary people over the years, and the excellent team work that they have demonstrated.
Without a doubt it is the people of Sanmar Engineering that are the prime cause of all the success we have enjoyed. People who are present here today, and those who have served us so well these past years. Talking of people who have served us well, it’s heart-warming that we have people here who have worked right through these thirtyfi ve years of Sanmar Engineering’s existence. I must place on record my appreciation of their loyalty and committed endeavours over such long periods.
On this occasion, I cannot but think of one individual who literally dedicated his life to Sanmar Engineering, and that is Seshadri. Starting from the very fi rst idea of the venture, and continuing on in
many, many roles, he was one person without whom Sanmar Engineering would not exist. MN Radhakrishnan has been for almost twenty years now, the person on whom I have depended to keep Sanmar Engineering moving onwards and upwards. Radha, thank you.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I hope I have not been too long-winded, and trust you will understand my sentiments. This business represents my fi rst step as an entrepreneur and its development and success really gave me the confi dence to take up other ventures. When I fi rst visited this location in 1974 or 1975, it was a distant lonely rice fi eld with one half completed building standing on it. There were no other industries on this road.
OMR is now a Electronic and Software development zone and is dotted with modern glass and steel buildings way past this location. In fact today these factory buildings are an anachronism in the current landscape, and I encourage our people to hide them behind more greenery. That is progress Ladies and Gentlemen, and I am delighted to have been a witness and a small part of it. Sanmar Engineering has always had a soft corner in my heart, and continues to be the crown jewel of The Sanmar Group.
N Sankar presenting mementoes to Mark Blinn, TD Kenneally and Max Mitchell.
N Kumar presenting mementoes to Clark Hurlbert and Tom Haan.
(l to r): Mrs Connie Haan, Tom Haan, Mark Blinn, N Sankar, US Consul General Andrew T Simkin and Max Mitchell during the dinner get-together held at Hotel Park Sheraton on 1 July 2011.