Mr. Amit Bhalla, President & CEO Hercules Hoists Limited in an interview with B2B Purchase

Hercules Hoists’ turnover recently increased by 43 per cent in fiscal years 21- 22. Please elaborate on this achievement and the key drivers.

Demand growth was seen across sectors, and it was a combination of “spike demand” and structural “rise in CAPEX” investments. Metals, cement, engineering, chemicals, and oil and gas are the most common. Except for a few sectors, such as automobiles, it was a very long-term demand. A large part of our business growth was also due to internal team efforts, capitalising on available opportunities, and converting big and small deals. Our distributors (ABPs) and supply partners have also played important roles in this growth. So, it was all-inclusive growth, and we’d like to keep it that way. All stakeholders benefit, and there is sustainable, inclusive growth across the value chain. 

How do you assess the business opportunities to enter the international market and expand imports for material handling? 

We have been market leaders in India for nearly six decades. On June 15th, we celebrated our 60th anniversary of completion. So, Indef is a legacy brand built on providing “products and services” with German technology and a rugged, reliable, and simple-to-use value proposition, even in harsh manufacturing conditions. With this strong foundation, we want to explore international markets, and in KG International, we have found a suitable partner who shares our values of long-term win-win relationships. We are very excited about this partnership in Dubai with KG International, which will represent our products and services in the Middle East and Africa. Similarly, we have partnered with the Delcot group in Bangladesh, and we are looking into other opportunities for export growth. Exports should account for 20-25 per cent of our total business in five years. From our current level of less than 5 per cent, this is our vision.

Can you elaborate on your business strategy for increasing the effectiveness of your B2B industrial product distribution channel sales? 

Here at Indef, B2B products are very different, and thus the need for systems and processes is very different, but the fundamentals of distribution management in terms of relationships, business development, ROI, and customer service and customer delight remain the same. I believe we are dealing with human behaviour and aspirations that are very similar across channels, whether B2B or B2C. We should rename B2B and B2C to H2H, which stands for human to human. As a result, we kept things simple and focused on “removing pain points” and “ease of doing business” with Indef. We have increased trust and interest in our brand by 40 per cent on average. Some of the top distributors have risen even higher, and success breeds optimism and a winning attitude. Our strategy is “their win is our win,” and it has worked for all of us.

How is technology evolving in the material handling industry? How are Hercules Hoists utilising them in its operations?

 Consumers’ needs are changing as they need to reduce manual work and increase the speed of operations. Everyone is focusing on increasing productivity and delivering higher throughput. Companies are increasingly deploying variable labour, with a need to quickly train the new workforce on material handling equipment. As a result, training content for service and the ease of transferable skills with speed are becoming critical. Furthermore, the need to generate, collect, analyse, and use data to improve the safety and uptime of MHE will become a necessity sooner than we think. It is necessary to continue observing, both within and outside the industry, the changing landscape of technology as disruptions and megatrends emerge outside of the industry, and we should be prepared to adapt and manoeuver quickly.

 What has helped you to maintain a dominant market position in this industry? Can you elaborate on your thoughts and the future of this industry? 

Indef stands for “tough and time-tested designs” and believes that this product will be safe and efficient even in harsh manufacturing conditions. Hercules Hoist Limited, as a company, stands for good business practices in terms of sustainability, social contribution, and customer-centricity. We revisited our “product value proposition” after several rounds of research, market insights, customer and channel interactions, and internal team meetings, and we launched improved versions of CVP. For our customers, we used the Create, Communicate, and Deliver Value (CCDV) model. The future Indef, or Indef 2.0, is customer-centric with design-based differentiation, and it does a significant amount of business in international markets. The future Indef is an agile organisation that can quickly adapt to changing market needs such as Industry 4.0, connected devices, sustainability, and so on. With all of this, a growth-oriented winning team culture in the organisation thrives on challenges, enjoys successes, learns quickly from failures, and is always on a continuous improvement plan. Indef of the future provides expected returns and rewards to its shareholders, distributors, customers, employees, suppliers, partners, and so on.