• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

Chetan Parikh interviewed Mr. Suneel M Advani, President and Vice Chairman, Blue Star Ltd., and Mr. Vir S Advani, CIO: Could youCEO, tell us somethingBlue Star about Design the various and lines Engineering of businesses that Ltd. you are in? � Mr. Suneel Advani: Broadly speaking, Blue Star is involved in heating, ventilation, air conditioning and refrigeration. � In the air conditioning segment, which is a significant part of the business, we are present in the entire broad spectrum of the business from room air conditioners to large industrial central air conditioning systems. � Let me begin at the bottom of the heap where you have the room air conditioners which are of two kinds: the traditional window air conditioners and split air conditioners, which have been introduced in the last seven or eight years. These form the room air conditioners segment, essentially because these units are used �for cooling rooms of various sizes. Room air conditioners at the low-end range from roughly one ton to three tons.� � One rung above this is the air conditioning packaged units. These systems, in terms of tonnage and size, come in the 5 tons to 20 tons per machine packages.��� Unlike the room air conditioners, these packaged air conditioners are not visible in the space it is cooling. These are typically for offices of 2000 to 10,000 square feet. Since these packaged air conditioners are not visible like the large central air conditioning systems, most people mistake them for central air conditioning systems. The fundamental difference between the two is the fact that large central air conditioning systems use chillers and the packaged units don�t. � www.capitalideasonline.com Page - 1 Chetan Parikh interviewed Mr. Suneel M Advani, President and Vice Chairman, Blue Star Ltd., and Mr. Vir S Advani, At the other endCEO, of the Blue spectrum, Star you Design have the largeand central Engineering air-conditioning Ltd. plants that use big chillers for cooling.� At the high end, the chillers will go from roughly 30 tons per machine upwards to 200 or even 500 tons per machine or you can take combinations of chillers of 50 tons — 5 numbers of 50 tons or 10 numbers of 80 tons.� The chillers configuration is ideal for air conditioning of a big building like a hotel, hospital or a shopping complex.� Although those using such buildings will just see the grills spewing cold whiff of air, there is a lot of technology and engineering sophistication that goes into its design to help bring in that cold air flow; the chiller is located in a plant room far removed from the site and cold air is carried through a maze of ducts all of which is hidden either inside walls or above the ceiling or below the floor. � Besides presence in all three segments of the air conditioning business, we have a significant presence in the refrigeration business as well. In the refrigeration systems, we have to built systems that would help reduce temperatures much lower than the air conditioners. A simple example of a refrigeration system is the water cooler. But refrigeration systems are built based on the purpose for which it is to be used and the ideal temperature the product requires. There are refrigeration systems for cold storages that store fruits, vegetables, milk, butter and such food items, where the cooling could be above zero.� Cold storages range goes all the way down to minus temperatures depending upon what you are cooling.� If you are freezing it, that will be below zero as is used for products like ice cream, ice, meat, chicken, etc. These refrigeration systems are not just like the coolers you see in the neighbourhood kirana store or the friendly meat store, though they too are refrigeration machines. These large refrigeration systems are used in cold storages or walk-in coolers, which are large store rooms lined with shelves to store products and the entire store room is maintained at a particular temperature. � The refrigeration equipment is used in a big way in supermarkets.� We have very few www.capitalideasonline.com Page - 2 Chetan Parikh interviewed Mr. Suneel M Advani, President and Vice Chairman, Blue Star Ltd., and Mr. Vir S Advani, supermarkets inCEO, India, Bluebut in theStar west, Design supermarkets and are Engineering a big convenience Ltd. for shoppers and you see rows after rows of this refrigerating equipment with display cases. You can see all the meat lined up there — it’s chilled to maintain its freshness, where you can see it, touch it and pick it up. � So broadly speaking, this is the range of equipment in air conditioning and refrigeration.� � Then, of course, there are heating systems too. In a way this is converse of cooling. Though very little is seen in India given our climatic conditions, we have implemented heating systems projects in a few places in the North. Particularly in Jammu & Kashmir we have installed big heating systems for whole buildings –� for the High Court, government offices and hotels in Srinagar and Gulmarg. These systems use boilers to heat water and then you distribute that hot water through piping – so that’s heating. There are smaller heating systems, which can be fixed to your room air conditioners to keep the room warm during winters. These are popular in cities like Delhi. These heating devices are fixed in the grill of the window air conditioners that heats up the air thrown in by the air conditioners fan. � Another area of our operation is ventilation. These are ideal air temperature management solutions for large areas which are too big to air condition and yet it gets extremely hot, 45� in the summer � like industrial shop floors or exhibition halls. To improve productivity, you ventilate the entire plant� using big blowers with forced draft ventilation. Herein, you force air movement through the factory and with that air movement you get cooling. � That in essence is our business. www.capitalideasonline.com Page - 3 Chetan Parikh interviewed Mr. Suneel M Advani, President and Vice Chairman, Blue Star Ltd., and Mr. Vir S Advani, � CEO, Blue Star Design and Engineering Ltd. CIO: What about the professional electronics and industrial equipment divisions? � Mr. Suneel Advani: At Blue Star, this is a separate division and is a business, which is unconnected with air conditioning.� We have been in this business of professional electronics and industrial equipments for the last 50 years. To be precise, we diversified into this business in 1954 to tide over the difficult recession in the Indian economy that had set in around 1953. So the founders of the company decided to diversify a bit and spread their risk a bit.� Our strength then was our ability to in dealing with foreigners and foreign equipment manufacturers. To cash in on this strength, they set up this business to import, distribute, install and maintain high-tech equipment. Those days these equipments were used only in research labs and education. Today, high tech equipment has more widespread applications in so many factories and laboratories.� So that range is made up of diverse types of electronics and industrial equipment. The only thing that connects them is that they are all big-ticket items � expensive, low-volume and high-value products and systems. Another common feature in these equipments are they are all high technology and so they require engineers. � The essence of Blue Star is that we are an engineering company — we are all engineers.� So this division also, professional electronics and industrial equipment, requires engineers to select the right equipment for the application, to install it and to maintain it� and to train the customers’ employees to operate them.� So it covers the range of equipment right from testing machines for mechanical engineering factories — they test hardness and malleability and ductility and various engineering parameters on materials.� There is a medical electronics department that sells equipments like CT scanners, MRI scanners and wide range of diagnostic and medical equipment. www.capitalideasonline.com Page - 4 Chetan Parikh interviewed Mr. Suneel M Advani, President and Vice Chairman, Blue Star Ltd., and Mr. Vir S Advani, � CEO, Blue Star Design and Engineering Ltd. There is an analytical instrument department that deals in electronic scientific instruments for chemical analysis of various types of chemicals.�� It will make out their composition or how much iron content is there in this chemical and things like that — which is mainly used in research institutions and quality control. � There is a data communications department.� In the area of data communication which sells equipment for data communication, modems and so on — we sell encryption equipment. Do you know, we provide the basic heart of ATMs — ATMs from which you draw your cash — the heart of that electronics control system is provided by data communications department, including the encryption and so on. � And there is a test and measurement instrument department, which handles electronic instrumentation for electronic manufacturing factories for testing various electronic parameters. � So as you can see they are all esoteric pieces of equipment — most people don’t hear about them — they are known to engineers, to R&D people, to manufacturing people in specialized areas.� But the beauty of this business is that we have been in it now for 50 years and every one of those 50 years, we have made a handsome profit.� It’s a good profitable business. � Besides electronics, we have a whole lot of industrial equipment like pumps and industrial valves and equipment for coal mines and various mining applications, for drilling, offshore drilling and specialized equipment for those applications which again the public do not hear about — they are very esoteric and they are specific to those industries.� That’s on the www.capitalideasonline.com Page - 5 Chetan Parikh interviewed Mr.

Load more

  23

Copy Link