The Gaurs is a trusted Indian partner for global textile machinery manufacturers. Started in 2010 by Mr. S. Gaur, an industry veteran with over 25 years of work experience, the Gaurs represent 11 principals across five territories – India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Thailand. In 2015, his son, Anubhav Gaur, joined the business which further strengthened the company’s presence. Together they continue to expand their business offerings across geographies.
We caught up with Mr. Gaur, the company’s Founder-Managing Director, and got to know from him in detail about the company’s history, focus areas, key principals that it represents, its areas of strength and future plans, among others.
Edited excerpts:
Looking back at the eventful journey of the company so far, Mr. Gaur said: “When we started initially, we represented only one principal – Richard Hough Ltd. (UK). Our team’s focus on advocating the technical benefits of the solutions and the commitment to serve customers helped us in on-boarding more principals and extending the territory we serve.”
Currently, the Gaurs provide customized machines and allied services as per customer requirements in the following industry verticals:
- Textiles (wovens and knits)
- Denims
- Non-wovens and technical textiles
- Geo textiles and geo composites
- Special fabrics, including coated & laminated fabrics, automotive fabrics, etc.
- Paper & jute industry
- Viscose industry
- Cold rolling mills, automotive & films
Interestingly, the Gaurs had started off by offering consulting and allied services to the paper and viscose industry in 2010. “We ventured into textiles, non-woven and technical textiles in 2012, and since then there has been no looking back. In wovens, knits and denim, we are focussed on wet processing & finishing. Recently we ventured into textile waste processing with the objective of providing a second life to fibres. We are aiming to be able to provide a complete, one-stop solution to customers planning to set up a new unit or add capacity in the existing units,” Mr. Gaur said.
The Gaurs currently represent Regal Rubber, KWF Hilger, Parex Mather and William Birch for India, Indonesia, Thailand, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, EFFE, Cibitex, GCM Group, MatchPoint, ATAC Makina, Technoplants and Dell’Orco & Villani are represented for India and Sri Lanka.”
Mr. Gaur added: “The Gaurs are now more capable than ever to provide critical processing & finishing machinery for any customer looking to set up a new unit or for replacing his old inefficient machines. However, we would certainly like to include some innovative solution for dyeing; printing machinery and solutions that can provide different finish or hand feel to the customer’s product.”
Untapped opportunities
Mr. Gaur further observed: “The Indian market is gradually opening up and beginning to adopt new technologies and machines that can provide consistent results and better output. This change is bringing great opportunities for us. As machinery suppliers, our ability to customize every aspect of our machine as per customer’s individual requirements has ensured that we are able to provide better value to our customers. Doing more with less will be the new mantra for the textile industry. There are tremendous untapped opportunities in the area of non-wovens, technical textiles and recycling of textile waste re-processing. India is still at a very nascent stage in these areas and there is a lot to be done if you compare India with other developed nations in these fields. As a company, if any customer wants to explore these untapped areas, he is welcome to talk to us. We are fully equipped to offer a complete solution, right from idea or product to setting up a complete plant and giving him the desired outcome.”
The focus these days in the textile industry is on areas such as automation, sustainability, energy efficiency and availability of key performance data, etc. Mr. Gaur said: “It does not really matter what level of automation or solutions you deploy in your plant; what matters is how it can ‘assist decision makers’ in making the right decisions. Of course, as an extension of this concept, if this information can somehow be connected to the organizational KPIs or product KPIs, an organization can become tremendously successful.”
He added: “All the principals that we represent are fully aware of the developments in technology, and we have tried to incorporate them into our machinery and solutions. If customers want to connect our machines to their in-house ERP and want information or they would just like to have standalone reporting information, it is all possible with the products and solutions we are providing currently. Our machines also use artificial intelligence to provide insights such as when the maintenance is due, what part of the machine needs lubrication or replacement, etc. So, as mentioned earlier, we can provide critical and timely information to enable correct decision making. Our principals are also continuously working to harness the latest technology and deploy it in our machines to maximize efficiency and reduce manpower”.
Aftersales service
Aftersales service support has emerged as a key differentiator nowadays. Mr. Gaur said: “The Gaurs are fully equipped to offer requisite services to our customers in a timely manner. With increase in the number of principals we represent, we have strengthened our back-end service network to ensure that help is available at hand. We not only have our associates located across markets but also have continued support and assistance of our principals and their team. We have been leveraging remote diagnostics for quite some time now. Many of our machines have advanced software solutions that ‘suggests’ what maintenance activity needs to be carried out on the machine.”
Remote trouble-shooting with intervention and resolution has been another area where we have been working with our principals to provide a seamless experience to our customers. “As the owners we ourselves have the technical competency and knowledge to perform emergency services, maintenance activity or spares replacement in any of our machines, if our engineers are not available. Besides this, we give a lot of emphasis on training the customer’s maintenance team so that routine maintenance activities are handled by them without any external help thus saving time and money,” he concluded with his statement.