Wittur Tools
11th February, 2021

Discussing the future of elevator components in India

Suraj Thodimarath, Wittur Managing Director Asia Pacific, was among the speakers of the online panel discussion “Trade in #Elevators, #Escalators and Components” organized by EECMAI, the newly established Elevator & Escalator Component Manufacturers' Association of India.

Suraj Thodimarath, Wittur Managing Director Asia Pacific, was among the speakers of the online panel discussion “Trade in #Elevators, #Escalators and Components” organized by EECMAI, the newly established Elevator & Escalator Component Manufacturers' Association of India.

EECMAI is a non-profit organization with the mission to support growth of the Indian elevator components market and Suraj is the appointed President.
The online panel on February 10, 2021, moderated by G Shanker from Madras Consulting Group, touched on many aspects of the Elevator world including sustainability, competitiveness, future-proofing, digitalization and compliance to standards with interventions from Marcello Personeni, Paresh Dixit, Rajesh Bywar, Sunanda Rajendran and Suraj Thodimarath.

Additional themes were the interesting gearing up of the African elevator market, particularly South Africa, and its excellent potential for Indian manufacturers, and the future perspectives of Indian elevator technology exports towards mature markets such as EU and US.

Quality vs performance, cost competitiveness and addressing the market demands were the key topics discussed by Suraj Thodimarath. Performance is defined by certain specifications, while the ability to consistently manufacture according to these standards is the definition of quality. If a company can constantly deliver better quality, this has an impact also on profits, due to reduction of rejections and scraps that add to the manufacturing costs. Quality has to be in everything that a company does, including on-time delivery, communication with customers, integrity, transparency.

To create the condition for the growth of export activities from India also in the elevator components business, companies need to educate customers and push them towards adoption of products according to best worldwide standards.

City Buildings are becoming taller due to urbanization growth: faster elevators are more and more needed also for residential and mid-segment projects. It is surely possible to deliver products from India with a world-class quality.

Companies should look at innovation to deliver according to international standards with the least possible costs, so that export markets become a viable growth driver for Indian companies.