INDEF
President & CEO, Mr. Amit Bhalla.
With that name behind it, Indef has established itself nationwide. “Our distributors also coined as our authorised business partners are a critical part of our business, ensuring our products and services are available across the length and breadth of the country,” Bhalla explains. “They are in every major city and zone in India, working with customers to ensure products and services are delivered to them while anticipating customer needs and wants. They are providing value to meet customers’ productivity needs today.” Most recently, Indef has introduced two new products, a compact chain block that can operate at any angle, and an Indef powered crane kit that can help build cranes 40% faster using Indef’s technology.
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“WE LOOKED INSIDE THE COMPANY, CREATING CROSS-FUNCTIONAL TEAMS TO LOOK AT OUR VALUE PROPOSITION.” GROWING COMPETITION
Indef needs every bit of that innovation and quality, as the market sector is becoming increasingly competitive. “Over the last decade, we faced new competition coming from many continents,” Bhalla observes. “European players have started aggressively expanding in India. Japanese companies have taken some market share with very premium products and technology. Chinese imports are at the
other end of the spectrum, with products available at a very low price. Some customers in this economy are very costconscious and moving to these suppliers. So that took market share and flattened our growth.” At the same time, the market growth has been kind of stagnant, demand has been suppressed by a lack of CapEx infrastructure investment in India over the last seven or eight years. “Projects got delayed, and our products are commonly used in CapEx investments, so those decisions delayed and impacted our business growth because of demand suppression,” Bhalla acknowledges. “Some of the challenges we face are more related to supply because of Covid-19. The whole world had those issues. Some of the smaller vendors have availability issues and recently we have seen an increase in raw material prices. Our costs have gone up by 25%. You can pass on the prices to the market, but only partially.” Indef’s response to these challenges has not been to dwell on what it cannot change but to look inward for solutions. “We looked inside the company, creating crossfunctional teams to look at our value proposition,” Bhalla says. This cross-functional approach arrived at a model called ‘CCDV’Create, Communicate, and Deliver Value to customers. “For ‘Create’ we look at how well our products are differentiated. ‘Communication’ is for our customers. What industries are they in? What are their issues and what channels of communication do we have? We invested heavily in digital marketing, social platforms, and lead generation,” Bhalla says. “We have relooked at our value
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