Roots Group Plans To Step Up Exports To 50 Per Cent Sales

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Chennai, August 5:: The Coimbatore-based Roots Group, with interests in automobile accessories like horns, cleaning equipment, castings, precision tools and hi-tech engineering services, has chalked out an ambitious plan to rake in half of its turnover from exports by fiscal 2005.

“We are exploring possibilities of getting into exports in a big way so that by 2005 we have a 50:50 ratio between exports and local sales,” chairman of the closely-held group, Mr K Ramaswamy told FE in Coimbatore. The group had a turnover of Rs 80 crore in 2002-03 and the target set for 2003-04 is Rs 110 crore.

Roots Industries, the largest among the eight-odd group companies, manufactures electric horns under licence from Bosch. The major OEM clients of the group are TVS, Telco, Mahindra & Mahindra and Ashok Leyland. The company is currently in talks with a slew of other OEMs including Ford India for the supply of horns. The company has clocked a turnover of Rs 34.67 crore in 2002-03 with Rs 6 crore coming from exports. For the current year the company has set a target of Rs 50 crore in turnover.

Roots Multiclean (RMCL) is a techno-economic joint venture with Hako Werke GmbH & Co, Germany, which holds 26 per cent of the Rs 2-crore capital in the company. It manufactures and exports a wide range of high performance suction sweepers and automatic scrubber driers and other cleaning equipment having applications in wide range of industries, hospitals and hotels, Mr M K Vijayasankar, managing director, said. He said the company had a turnover of Rs 17.13 crore in 2002-03 with Rs 6.5 crore exports. This year turnover is slated to grow to Rs 23.6 crore. Export may grow 30 per cent.