Niranjan Mudholkar

“While we already have a large share in the domestic market, we are trying to enhance our global presence by focusing on the exports markets. This is the time of India and we are getting ourselves ready from the perspectives of mindset, technology as well as people to really become an Indian global machine tool player.”

February 2023: At the IMTEX 2023 show in Bengaluru, Niranjan Mudholkar, Editorial Director, Pro MFG Media, caught up with T K Ramesh, Managing Director, Micromatic Machine Tools Pvt. Ltd. (Ace Micromatic Group) to understand how the Group is reinventing itself having served the industry for more than four decades. TKR, as he is popularly known, shared several insights with regards to the Group’s evolution underlining its focus on technology, international markets, partnership with the SMEs and digital transformation.

The Ace Micromatic Group, which is one of the pillars of the Indian machine tools industry, has been serving the industry for more than four decades now. How is the Group reinventing itself in the face of the many changes happening across the world and the industry?

We are reinventing ourselves by developing the next level of products and by getting into newer technologies. For example, at this IMTEX, we have demonstrated our 3D printing machines. We are also working big time in the IIoT space. We have launched the AMG IIoT at this show. It is a methodology to collect data in real-time and is also an engine that can analyse this data. The objective is to empower our customers to take informed, right and timely decisions. Of course, we have been doing it for many years even before the IIoT or Industry 4.0 was invented. In those times, we used to call production monitoring and productivity monitoring. Of course, we have now enhanced those skills, capabilities and engine. We are trying to look at much tighter integrations and real time information for decision making. Another thing that we are doing is that we are combining technologies. We have a very interesting machine from AMS which can fill materials - especially useful for dies. On the Ace side, we have multi-tasking machines. Basically, we are bringing in the next level of technology from an Indian perspective. We are also concentrating big time on growing globally. While we already have a large share in the domestic market, we are trying to enhance our global presence by focusing on the exports markets. This is the time of India and we are getting ourselves ready from the perspectives of mindset, technology as well as people to really become an Indian multinational machine tool player.

With regards to exports, which are the markets that you are targeting?

Surprisingly, we were the first and perhaps the most successful base in China. We have several offices in China, and I think it is commendable that we have got over 2000 machines working in China. So, China is definitely one of the key markets for us. Similarly, as we see a lot of manufacturing moving eastwards, we are also looking at several markets in the east like Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia. We are also looking at the Middle East. Russia presents a great opportunity at this point in time. We are in the process of increasing in other regions; for example, we are looking at an office in Mexico. So, these are some of the international markets that we are looking at in addition to Europe where we have been traditionally. Of course, we already have an office in Germany.

How is the Group further strengthening its partnership with the SMEs?

SMEs have been the bread-and-butter clientele of the Group and we strongly believe the SME segment is the true growth engine of the nation. Historically also, if you look back at the 1980s and the 1990s, the success of the automotive industry was driven by the SMEs. All studies show that the best ecosystem for manufacturing small cars and two wheelers is in India, comparable with China or any other Southeast Asian country. For manufacturing to grow deeper and deeper, the SMEs of India will be a major role. We have been talking about ‘Make in India’ for the world, so a lot of value addition has to happen at SME level. So, 60 percent of our clientele is from the SME segment and we understand that the SMEs need handholding – not just in products but also in solutions as well as training & development. In fact, we have been providing the complete ecosystem to the SMEs and we are strengthening it now by getting on board more and more relevant products as well as more and more relevant partners who can help with finance, training, engineering technology, CAD/CAM and so on.

What is the Group doing with regards to staying abreast with the overall digital transformation?

We are experimenting and we are learning better ways that are more effective but less expensive and faster in terms of data acquisition which is something that we are doing internally ourselves. From the customer perspective, digitization means many things to many people. But if you look at it closely, it primarily consists of three things – 1. Converting things to digital, 2. Storing those things in a particular way and 3. Using that as a decision-making tool. So, each of these stages keep getting faster, better and cheaper. So, these are the areas that we are focusing on as a solutions provider.

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