Avast Industry experience and the knack to identify and react to market needs early on are paying off for this first generation entrepreneur. Ashok Ghanshyamdas Rajani, chairman and managing director of Seya Industries, one of India’s fastest growing specialty chemicals makers, says the company’s strength lies in its indepth product expertise, ability to adapt to new markets, its quality products and competitive pricing.
This little known company, which is ranked number one on the BW Businessworld’s Fastest Growing Companies-2017 list in the below Rs 1,000-crore category, posted almost 3,000 per cent growth in net profit in the last five years, while its sales grew 870 per cent during this period.
Founded in 1990 as Sriman Organic Chemical Industries and renamed in 2009, Seya’s growth has been phenomenal in the last five years and it is now seen as an emerging leader in the Indian specialty chemical industry. The company’s current product portfolio caters to several industries, including pharmaceuticals, personal care, health supplements, agrochemicals, rubber, and textile among others.
“What drove the company’s growth in the last four to five years is its constant focus on research and development to improve product quality and yield, emphasis on reducing raw material and energy consumption, and its high-value chain integration in product mix,” says Rajani, who has 38 years of professional experience in the chemical industry.
Seya’s constant thrust to upgrade and improve by adopting the best available technology for process, automation and energy management to achieve optimum manufacturing cost efficiency too played a vital role in its journey to high growth and profitability. The other critical factor that supported Seya’s enormous growth was the renewed interest in Indian manufacturers. The deficit in supply owing to shutdown of leading companies in China on grounds of environmental concerns in the last few years prompted the user industries worldwide to look at India as a preferred sourcing location.
Being one of the lowest-cost producers in its particular segment mainly due to its high levels of manufacturing process integration, Seya naturally became a preferred choice for global customers. Of course, its wider international market presence through merchant exports also helped its growth.
But going forward, the company foresees a host of challenges too. “Increasing crude prices controlling demand growth and cost escalation in latest technologies could potentially take away the advantages. But, in order to overcome the key challenges going forward, we have embarked on an exciting journey to become a fully-integrated player in the field of specialty chemicals which will help us to propel in new growth markets and penetrate deeper into our current markets,” says Rajani.
No doubt, the company’s past performance and its future potential have various investors interested in it; it is considered among the top six stock-picks by mutual fund houses. Reliance Mutual Fund has already picked up 9.83 per cent stake in Seya through Reliance Nippon Life Asset Management.
The stock recorded more than centurion growth during 2015-16 and more than double centurion this year (2016-17) on BSE.
The company, which has already set a target of Rs 1,000 crore in sales by 2020, boasts of its two unique advantages — the continuous growth of the industries that it serves and its reasonably complex manufacturing process that is not easy to replicate — as reasons behind its high growth potential.
BW Reporters
Unnikrishnan is currently Senior Associate Editor with BW Businessworld at its Mumbai Bureau. During his two decades long journalistic career, he has received several media awards and recognitions. His articles on healthcare, life sciences and intellectual property rights (IPR) have been republished by several international blogs and journals.
