Tell us about your R&D activities.
As mentioned earlier, Godrej has acquired / developed the body of knowledge by painstakingly working on projects with a large cross-section of subject matter experts.
Our R&D has been project-led and application-oriented. One may call it sponsored R&D. We at Godrej have developed hundreds of processes in all fields of manufacturing - forming, fabrication & welding, machining, surface treatments, heat treatments and assembly & testing - for multiple projects, materials, service conditions etc.
Over and above, we also work on developing technologies and capabilities that are futuristic in nature. For example, there is work being done to develop rubber and composites for special applications. However, such pure R&D efforts are a small portion of what we do for developing technologies for projects that are engineered-to-order.
Do you have any kind of technical collaborations or partnerships with international companies? Tell us about the same.
We do not have any technical collaboration. However, Godrej has executed several projects for global majors under the offsets policy. With successful demonstration of manufacturing and project execution capabilities, we have created a business case for being considered to be a part of their regular supply chain and have already embarked on that path.
This is a scalable model, and hence, we will continue to look forward to partner with foreign OEMs, help them meet their obligation under offsets - and in doing so, build a business case for being part of their supply chain to grow our business exponentially.
It is understood that G&B is targeting a turnover of Rs10,000 crore for this fiscal. How much is the defence segment likely to contribute to this?
For reasons of confidentiality, we cannot share the turnover from defence sector. However, it should suffice to say that it is small.
Presently, business volumes in sectors like defence, nuclear power & aerospace are largely dependent on demand from government and on the pace of work / output or the efficacy of the entire ecosystem - from raw material supply, production, QA & QC, assembly, testing, documentation, to commissioning.
As the system of manufacturing and programme management matures, we can expect to see a massive uptick in the rate of growth. Given the small size of business, the current CAGR looks awesome. Once the roadblocks are removed, one can experience explosive growth.
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