Spartan: front runner in getting tower cranes to India

“With all the in-house designing, manufacturing and quality control set-ups, Spartan has an edge over others,” explains Vikram Mehta, Managing Director, Spartan Engineering Industries Pvt. Ltd.
Spartan Engineering Industries Pvt. Ltd. is one of the India’s leading small and medium enterprises, with a strong commitment to contributing to the community. In an exclusive interview with ACE Update, Vikram Mehta shares how the major crane manufacturers are gaining footholds in the emerging markets like India.
Spartan is one of the few Indian manufacturers who have gained foothold in tower crane manufacturing. Could you brief us about tower crane portfolio?Spartan has been front runner in getting tower cranes to India. With around 7 years of experience in delivering the best tower cranes to industry, we can assure most advanced, safest tower cranes any one could offer. Spartan now manufactures entire tower crane range in India at Atgaon factory. It uses European gear box motor and state-of-the-art electrical control panel with VFDs to save on power and develop a rugged, maintenance-free tower crane with world-class safety features. Our Indian plant ensures better availability and smooth supplies to the ever-growing demand of tower cranes in India. We have launched India-make tower crane at EXCON 2013, Bangalore.
What makes a tower crane efficient?Our plant manufactures various models of tower cranes from 6- to 50- tonne capacity of stationary, inner climbing and luffing crane models. With all the in-house designing, manufacturing and quality-control set-ups, Spartan has an edge over others. Well equipped with latest machineries and processes, our plant delivers rugged sophisticated tower cranes, adhering to international safety standards. We have 4 models with 40, 50, 55 and 60 metres jib of inner climbing type, stationary and travelling models, having various budgets and requirements.
Most of the major crane manufacturers are gaining footholds in the emerging markets like India. Being an Indian cranes manufacturer, how do you look at this?Due to recent fluctuations in dollar, which makes it incompetent to import, we are starting manufacturing entire tower crane range at our Atgaon factory. This will make us more price competitive and more aggressive to take on bigger market share of booming India market.
What are your key competitive differentiators in the market today?The key competitive differentiators would be to have focused and come closer to customers by conducting Preventive Maintenance Clinics (PMC) and signing spare parts rate contracts. Additionally, we have increased service engineers to 150 numbers. We have invested in world-class Oracle ERP System for receiving call management and service module. As far as innovations are concerned, we have ramped up our strength of people to our design team from 2 to 20 in the past 1 year and invested in high-end IT systems and 3D software for faster, accurate designs.
Please name the markets where you would like to strengthen your foothold.India has large untapped market hidden in Tier-II and Tier-III cities. We are developing strong dealership network across India. Our training and development team has developed training programs to empower our dealers. Our R&D team is constantly working toward improving product features in safety, reliability and ease of operation from customer point of view. We do have various presentation kits for every product, which is shared with them and explained them on every minute feature and safety norm of the machines, not just to operate but how to avoid breakdowns and increase the life of machines. So far we have received various acknowledgements for the same, and we thank our customers to give us an opportunity for the same.
Tell us about your some of the recent significant achievements.We were one of the participants and event sponsors for South Asia’s biggest construction equipment event EXCON 2013. Our stall was third largest outdoor stall, covering 1,500 sq. metres. Around 30 operational and non-operational equipment were displayed in the area which included a range of man and material handling equipment like SPM 150 and SMH 150, twin cage hoists. Exclusively designed SCM 55 and SBM 55 were also on display, boasting of our leadership in bar bending and bar cutting.
We also provided demos of cutting and bending to show machines’ capability and ease in operations. Spartan was a proud Indian manufacturer to launch its India-make tower cranes at EXCON — supposedly, only Indian manufacturer to do so. This too was highly discussed and shared by many at EXCON. The tower crane stood tall and could be seen right from the highway outside the venue.
Spartan Engineering Industries Pvt. Ltd. is also honoured as one of India’s top 30 SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises). This is presented to Indian companies which define success by not only the bottom line, but by their contributions to the community, dedication to great customer service, creation and preservation of workplace, cultures of excellence, while choosing to be great instead of big.

6