Amoli Shah’s enlightened leadership
Prashant Group, established in 1975, is one of India’s leading textile machinery manufacturers. It has made its mark on the industry since last four decades and keeps growing. It started with producing vacuum pumps and entered the textile business in 1980, with narrow fabric machinery. The group tied up with Gamatex of Italy in 1987 to manufacture fixed cone sectional warping machines, and in this collaboration introduced this technology in India.
Prashant Group has over 1,000 employees and owns 11 plants spread across 78,000 square meters of space and is growing at an annual rate of 12-15%. It is diversified into three main business activities, that is, vacuum pump manufacturing, textile machinery and plastic machinery. The textile segment of the company provides machinery and solutions for weaving preparation, including sizing machines, warping machines, sectional warping machines, specialized machines for technical textiles and geotextile machines like Poly Beamer for PP and HDTP tape. The company also makes completely automatic robotic sectional warping machines.
In the material handling sector it manufactures manual trolleys, motorized battery-operated trolleys, inspection machines, and completely computerized vertical beam storage systems. In the weaving preparatory equipment, it is a one-stop solution provider.
The weaving preparatory segment is handled by mainly three companies, namely, Prashant West Point, Prashant Gamatex and Prashant Ferber. In the high-tech sectional warping machine, the group enjoys over 75% market share in India and is a market leader.
Prashant Group’s success is mainly due to its USP of selling world-class products at affordable prices. This is one of the main reasons why the group’s products are preferred by Indian customers over European or Chinese products.
The group believes that the Indian market has a lot of growth potential if provided with the latest and best technology.
In an exclusive interview to The Textile Magazine, Ms. Amoli Shah said: “The textile share of India in the world market was around 11% during the Independence period, but it came down to 2-3% by 2003; even now the market share remains around 5%, which could grow with the help of latest technology.”
Prashant Group makes a lot of R&D investments to bring out the best technology and at appropriate prices. The year 2017 was an excellent one for the group as a whole, even after GST and demonetization. There was no effect on the company’s growth because it exports goods to over 40 different countries.
The company’s current production capacity is 14-15 sectional warping machines per month. It has set up two new plants which would increase the overall production capacity to 16-18 machines per month.
Prashant West Point manufactures sizing machines for spun yarn, direct warping machines, warping creels, indigo dyeing and sizing machine, denim preparation equipment and poly beamer for PP and HDPE tapes.
Prashant Group aims to introduce a new machine in the market every year. With 2019 ITMA Barcelona speeding up, one can expect a few more quality-competitive and cost-effective products from the company. Ever since inception, Prashant has been a customer-centric company. The one and only goal of the company is to provide world-class products at appropriate prices. It is committed to provide best technology to the Indian market.
The company is currently working on 3-4 new projects which will lead to expansion. Ms. Amoli said: “In 2017, we introduced very innovative Indigo sheet dyeing machine which is much more environment friendly than the conventional machines available in the market. We are very proud to protect the environment by giving innovative solutions.”
The company is very active in corporate social activities. It is supporting schools in Gujarat and Bihar. Mr. Prakash Shah, Founder and Chairman of the company, plans to develop a cluster to help the Khadi Udyod and aims to produce special machinery to develop khadi products.
Ms. Amoli Shah entered the business in 2004. Within a span of 15 years, this young woman entrepreneur has brought in significant changes in the company that have aided in top-line growth and increased brand awareness for the products across the globe. Previously, the company had only one segment, and was exporting to 4-5 countries, but today it has more than 2,000 installations of sectional warping spread across 40 countries.
Ms. Amoli Shah is a successful women entrepreneur in textile machinery manufacturing industry. It is her belief that in 10 years time there will be more women playing a key role in top level management within this vertical. She said: “It gives me so much joy when customers appreciate our products and our sincere efforts for this industry. I hope the next-gen will see a lot more such strong leaders who will drive growth in textile business.”