India’s TOP 500 Companies 2021

INDIA’S TOP 500 COMPANIES 2021 162 Experts’ View How would you summarize your company’s journey since its inception? I would say that we started with a bang – making a decent profit and declaring a 25% dividend in the very first full year of commercial operations. As pioneer of mini cement units, the Founder of our Group, Mr. Ramachandra Raju soon became the blue-eyed boy of All India Financial Institutions. This had its flip side too. The financial institutions felt that he had the Midas Touch, and persuaded him to take over a few sick units for rehabilitation. He obliged. But it did not work exactly the way that the lenders hoped. In the efforts to rehabilitate sick units at the behest of lenders, some of our resources were put to sub-optimal use. Mr. Ramachandra Raju was an entrepreneur in a hurry. He wanted to introduce innovative products much ahead of their times. Bison Panels from Germany, Seccolor pre-painted steel windows from Italy, Alltek paints from Sweden and pre-fab housing were examples. Resources of the company were committed to these projects, which had their teething troubles. As a result, we did not have enough resources to meet the adverse time in a cyclical industry like cement. In course of time, we overcame all the challenges. The innovative products introduced for the first time in the country overcame their teething problems, and established themselves. Looking back, his foresight has helped us. The philosophy of Growth and Innovative Products has been inherited and internalized by the next generation of leaders. We are always on the lookout for new technologies and new products. What are some of the most significant milestones of the company in recent years? Milestones, there are many in our journey of 4 decades. I can cite only a few of them. Graduating from mini cement to an integrated cement plant was a significant milestone. A series of expansion projects enabled us to grow to be a company with 2.7-million-ton capacity. One time Settlement with the lenders with private finances raised purely using the personal credibility of the Founder was another. Diversification into building materials and breaking free of the label of being a single product company producing cement was a significant milestone. NCL Group can now boast of a diverse range of building materials like partitions and ceilings, custom-made doors, windows and doors, paints, Putties AAC blocks and pre-fab structures. I don’t know if any other Group can claim this distinction. One achievement that we take considerable pride in is the manner in which we emerged from the gloom of Corporate Debt Restructure (CDR) with the lenders to the relative boom of expansion and growth. This was possible through bold initiatives of going for private placement of debentures to retire the bank debt and simultaneously plan expansion projects. Eye-brows were raised when we embarked on this plan. I am glad that we were able to prove the skeptics wrong, and returned to the comfort of profitability and growth. The latest milestone in financial terms was the crossing the 1500 crore mark in turnover in 2021. We are at the striking distance of 2000 crores turnover. Recently we also crossed the 1000 crore mark in market capitalization. NCL INDUSTRIES LIMITED K Ravi Managing Director Dun & Bradstr et