His stiff upper lip may belie his affale nature, but Satish Kaura, chairman & managing director of the Rs 1,000-crore Samtel India, which manufactures colour and monochrome television picture tubes among other high-tech electronic components, including deflection yokes, electron guns, heaters, cathodes etc, is not the one who cares too much about outward appearances. It?s actions that count, he says. There?s ample evidence of it.
Kaura received the Padma Shri a few years ago for his contribution to science and technology. His office has numerous awards on display. There is so much to show that he has run out of space in his office. Now it?s the conference room and other areas of the Samtel headquarters in New Delhi that display his trophies instead. Even then Kaura wears his success lightly. No pride in this man on account of his achievements.
An alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, Kaura passed out in the second batch with a degree in electronics engineering way back in 1966. ?Those were early days of the institution,? he says. ?Each IIT in the country had tie-ups with different universities.
So, IIT Chennai, for instance, had a tie-up with German universities, IIT Delhi with the English, IIT Kanpur with American universities and so on.?
The visiting faculty from the American universities at IIT Kanpur had a deep impact on the young Kaura. He made up his mind to study abroad. Says he, ?I went to Canada to pursue a master?s degree in electronics engineering from the Carleton University.? Thereafter he worked in Canada as well as in Europe before coming back to India in 1971. He was 31 years old.
Ironically, India was in the thick of war with neighbouring Pakistan at that time. These were also pre-liberalisation days, at the height of the license Raj. How difficult it was to do business at that time can be gauged from what Kaura has to say about his experiences back then. He says, ?We had to go to the finance ministry requesting for lines of credit at banks, justifying our need for foreign exchange and disclosing which country we plan to purchase our inputs from. All this for second-hand imports we could use for manufacturing black and white picture tubes at our factory in Ghaziabad. Today Indian companies are acquiring firms overseas with hardly any difficulty. What a change!?
Kaura?s company has changed too. Samtel was formed in 1983 as a publicly-listed enterprise. His first venture Teletube Electronics was a privately-held one. It still exists, manufacturing black & white picture tubes. The love for his first business, which he set up two years after he came back to India, is still there.
Teletube was formed when the market for TV sets, black & white, to be precise, was opening up in India. Kaura?s education and experience as an electronics engineer came in handy here. There were a handful of companies making radios at that time. Only one company ? JK Electronics ? manufactured TV sets. Says Kaura, ?When the was company started, there were TV stations in no more than four cities and demand was obviously restricted to these areas.?
But soon after, the government sanctioned setting up of TV stations in more than 100 cities. This was the opportunity Kaura was waiting for. Teletube never looked back thereafter. Demand surged enormously. The next wave came a decade later during the Asian Games in 1982. The government sanctioned the manufacture of colour TV sets. That is the time Kaura made the next leap setting up Samtel. ?It is imperative to keep pace with market demand. You need to change at times too,? he says.
It wasn?t easy. The business needed to transform quite a bit, if the demand had to be met. Shutting down old factories; setting up new ones, realigning staff, training them, even letting go some of them, was necessary. These lessons have stayed with Kaura. He understands the business of reinvention well.
Samtel today has diversified into the manufacture of avionic, industrial and medical display tubes, glass parts etc. It even provides aeronautical consulting. The company has a KPO or knowledge process outsourcing unit that is into computer aided design. The goal, says Kaura, is to be a full service provider in the area of avionics in the future. The company has also set up a new automation solutions division with the objective of providing consultancy services to manufacturing units.
In the midst of this his core business of colour and monochrome picture tubes continues to chug along quite well. The company is likely to see a profit at the end of the current quarter this fiscal after two years of sustained losses, he says. The sexagenarian is not saying how much the profit would be, but the confidence he exudes is indication enough that it will be a decent amount. Kaura is a strong believer in the market for pictures tubes despite the trend being overwhelmingly in favour of LCD and plasma panels. ?There are about 500-600 million people in our country who can not afford high-end TV sets,? he says. ?There lies our market.?
To reiterate his point he indicates what the Tamil Nadu government did recently. About a year ago, the government there decided to gift a 14? colour TV set to poor families. ?Six million TV sets were purchased for Rs 2,300 per piece,? he says. ?Another six million are anticipated to be purchased in the future.?
This is not all. Traditional CRT or cathode-ray-tube TV sets are growing at a compounded annual growth rate of about 18%. That?s decent enough, he says, despite the onslaught of LCD and plasma panels.
That explains why Kaura is confident about his core business. His company enjoys a 60% share of the picture tube market. What?s more? Anti-dumping laws in the country have helped peak demand for his products, he claims. ?I don?t think this market will die easily. I have no reason to believe so when there are takers for my products,? he says.
As the business expands, so are responsibilities. Kaura?s children are helping him shoulder some of them. His son Puneet, for instance, runs the avionics business. Daughter Swati, on the other hand, is in charge of the KPO located at Gurgaon in Haryana. Between them there is a fine understanding, says Kaura. ?The avionics business,? he says, ?has a tie-up with the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited. It also has an international tie-up with a French company called Thales. All of this for the manufacture of complex helmet mounted displays among other components. Then there is a joint venture with a US firm Corning for glass parts.?
Clearly, managing all of this hasn?t been easy for a company that has been in the picture tube business, but the Kauras have pulled it off quite well. ?The initial period,? says the first-generation entrepreneur, ?was difficult especially during the early days of the tie-up with HAL. But we did not give up.?
This challenge of being able to adapt to new businesses altogether remains key as Samtel continues to keep its eye on newer avenues. Kaura seems to appreciate what he has today owing to the struggles he has endured in the past. The desire to build a solid organisation has always pushed him through.
Samtel, for the record, has an employee-strength of 6,000. It is also the largest exporter of picture tubes from India.
In his free time, Kaura loves playing golf. But there?s another passion he has: education. Along with his wife Alka, Kaura runs three schools in Ghaziabad, Haryana. There?s one more in Bhiwadi, Rajasthan. Together, these institutions provide education to over 8,000 students. The educational institution at Bhiwadi is also working towards the upliftment of people in the neighbourhood. It?s imperative, he believes, to strengthen people around, that way they understand what are their rights and responsibilities.
To Kaura, corporate social responsibility is not about lip service or indulging in stray episodes of social service. It?s a well-defined programme. Education is clearly part of it. Kaura believes that educating young people today prepares them for the challenges tomorrow. It also gives him a strange satisfaction of having contributed to the development of people in some way. ?My interaction with American professors at IIT triggered my curiosity to study abroad. If I can open up the minds of young people to the myriad possibilities that exist with education, I think I would have achieved a lot.?
This may seem daunting at one hand, but like his business ventures, Kaura is taking it all in his stride. It?s the journey that counts, he says.
Fact file
•Satish Kaura is chairman and managing director of Samtel India
• Samtel India manufactures colour and monochrome picture tubes, glass parts, medical, industrial and avionic display systems, cathodes, heaters etc
• The turnover of the company is approximately Rs 1,000 crore