With the opening up of the Indian economy in the early ‘90s, there has been a steady and strong presence of Indian manufactured products in the international market.  Initially there was some hesitation whether the international market would accept an Indian product.  This was primarily due to the fact that we had not really offered our manufactured products to global markets in a large scale; only agricultural products were being exported.  This is in spite of the fact that Indian craftsmanship is well known and appreciated by everyone, which is evident from some of the finely crafted artefacts clandestinely finding their way to many museums and private collectors of the world.

Pre ‘91, agriculture used to be the mainstay in India, contributing to a little more than 50% of the GDP, while manufacturing, services and other sectors accounted for the rest.  Thanks to the bold fiscal measures taken in the ‘90s, there has been huge increase in manufacturing and services activity in the country.  Today, the services sector accounts for 50% of the GDP, manufacturing 32% and agriculture and allied sector’s share coming down to18%.  These are not exact figures but one can see the drastic change in the trend.

If the earlier 5 year plans had already set up the manufacturing base with industries like steel, cement, paper, mining, transport as well as defence, the new look economy started giving impetus to indigenous manufacture of automobiles, computer hardware and software, pharmaceuticals, hospitality, food processing, infrastructure, petroleum and oil drilling  and many other industries.  The ease of doing business also increased which resulted in many global corporates setting up base in India and further expanding their production capabilities in a short while.

Incinerator production really started initially in the ‘80s, but was given a fillip in the ‘90s with regulatory authorities becoming more serious on waste management.

At this point there were not many incinerator manufacturers and even existing ones also had no clue about the correct design of the incinerator.  They simply went about making what they thought was an incinerator and prices were anybody’s guess.

Many rules such as the Management & Handling of Municipal Solid Waste, Bio-Medical Waste, Hazardous Waste, etc. not only paved way for standards being set for incinerator designs, in line with global standards, but also ensured there is a stabilization of the configuration of the equipment and hence price. 

Our exports of incinerators started in the early 2000s with three large machines being supplied to Africa.  There was no looking back after this.  Our prices at this point were obviously quite competitive which made many buyers make a beeline to Haat’s products from around the world. 

Now what happened to the rest of the global manufacturing scenario for incinerators?  Some manufacturers were enjoying exclusivity (nay, monopoly) with buyers because of the countries of origin at prices which were abominably high.  With companies like Haat and others from India entering the market in the early 2000s, European manufacturers had to compete with India in terms of price, the quality of Indian products having already been established and did not require any further comparison but price.

We would like to highlight here a particular instance to explain our statement.  We were chosen by one of the largest engineering consultant groups in France for a project in the Middle East.  This was for an Oil and Gas Drilling site and the consultant specifically recommended Haat’s incinerator package for this project.  After sending our technical and commercial bid and negotiations, we were expecting the customer to place the order. 

However, we were surprised when the customer called to say that the order was being placed on a European company purely on price even though the engineering consultant recommended Haat.  The competitor knew Haat is recommended by the technical consultant, so he chose to offer a simpler version at very low price, anticipating Haat’s price.  We requested the client to send the technical specifications of the competitor’s product so as to assess and see if we have made a mistake.  This was accepted by him since the recommendation was still for Haat.  The customer sent the specifications and we found to our surprise what was quoted by the European company was a simple basic model incinerator unsuitable for this application and upon pointing out this flaw, the buyer who is very large EPC Company in the world readily agreed to place the order on us. 

It just shows that the roles have been reversed now with a European manufacturer competing with an Indian manufacturer on price, without being able to offer a technically acceptable product at that price.  This is a setback for European manufacturers but we won the battle both technically and commercially.  The competitor knows now that our products match client requirements technically as well as on price and so they had to let go of their monopolistic approach and accept the ground reality.

This is evident from further bids in which we participated where we found that the incinerator prices quoted by many manufacturers were on par with ours and it is only a matter of technical acceptance of the product by the end client.

Our quality and justification of price stand vindicated in the bargain.