As a leading EPCC company in India delivering turnkey projects to oils and fats producers globally, Kumar has many specialities. These include edible and non-edible vegetable oil extraction, pre-treatment, refining, oils and fats modification, biodiesel, oleochemicals, and waste product recovery.
Biju George Palayil is an oils and fats industry veteran who took over the reins of Kumar Metal Industries in 2021. Prior to joining Kumar, he gathered deeply relevant learnings from his years at VVF India, Sinar Mas Group, Darmex Group (both in Indonesia), and Mectech Group in India. His nearly three decades of industry experience equipped him to steer this already leading engineering company to even greater heights.
Biju's extensive work in oils and fats organisations is underpinned by his training as a scientist and a businessman. He graduated with a B. Sc. (Tech.) in Oil Technology from Nagarjuna University and an MBA from the Indian School of Business. He has successfully completed Executive Management programmes at Wharton and Kellogg School. Biju has also embarked on training and certification programmes in Quality Control Management Systems and Manufacturing Supervision as per US FDA GMP guidelines.
In this article, he talks about his journey as CEO of Kumar Metal Industries, one of the largest global EPCC companies in India.
Kumar Metal Industries has always been a force to reckon with.
It was founded in 1939 in Lahore, as a small workshop making spare parts for oil mills. By the time I came onboard as CEO in 2021, Kumar already had a long, illustrious history and a well-established name in the oils and fats industry. With several established industry players for customers, Kumar was comfortably making a turnover of INR 100-130 crore annually.
What could I do to make the best EPCC company in India even more successful?
When I joined as CEO in 2021, I was given a specific mandate. To diversify Kumar's product portfolio. To take a more aggressive position with business development. And to take Kumar to new geographies, to new customers. Essentially, my vision was to spearhead the next phase of growth for this leading engineering company.
Only three years down the line, I can already say that we're on the right path. We've grown at a rate of over 30% year-on-year. We've created shared value for our customers and other stakeholders. And we've finetuned our vision to become one of the largest EPCC companies in the world.
How did we do it all?
Expanding along multiple axes: A larger product portfolio
For decades, Kumar has been principally involved in edible oil extraction and refining. But as a holistic solutions provider, Kumar could not (and did not) turn away from expanding into allied industries and processes.
Since 2021, we've explored more value-added products in downstream processes in the oils and fats industry. Think oleochemicals, biodiesel, lecithin, and beyond. We've incorporated relevant products in our equipment lines and delivered projects that help our customers create more value. This diversification into solutions for high-value products has directly impacted business. Our customers have certainly enjoyed growth, and that growth has also trickled back to us in terms of higher demand for more holistic solutions and increases in project ticket size.
A wider global presence
Kumar has always prided itself on the quality it delivers. However, only our customers across India and a few African markets were able to experience and benefit from that quality. So, one thing was clear to me from the start - as one of the largest EPCC companies in India, Kumar had to share its expertise as far and wide as possible.
In recent years, we've brought our cutting-edge equipment to new geographies and new customers. I was able to steer the Kumar ship to new shores through strategic business development, certainly. But I cannot deny the impact of our new products related to solvent extraction, biodiesel and oleochemicals, which opened up opportunities to work with new customers.
We now boast of a larger presence in South-East Asia, North America, Africa, and even India, with important projects delivered in Jammu & Kashmir and Maharashtra. In fact, we've also established service centres in close proximity to our new customer clusters. So wherever in the world our customers are, they have access to our pre- and post-sales support services 24x7.
Leaving no one behind
Our customers are at the heart of all we do. In every project, with every innovation, we're thinking about how we can solve our customers' problems and create more value for them, theircustomers, and, by extension, for ourselves. However, customers are not the only stakeholders in this complex ecosystem.
Kumar is a leading EPCC company in India because of its holistic vision of growth. Under my leadership, we've aimed for 3-4x topline growth, but that growth cannot come at the cost of ethics or sustainability. Neither can it come at the cost of inequitable growth for our people, especially since nurturing the best EPCC company in India is hardly a one-person job.
When we aim for topline growth, the entire organisation has to grow. So, we have done a significant amount of restructuring across departments. We've restructured and added new talent to our production, design engineering, supply chain management, project execution, project management, and marketing functions. Kumar's strength has grown by almost 30% in the past three years. But these are just the numbers - I have had the pleasure of also witnessing the subtler ways in which Kumar has evolved. Targeted interventions for upskilling and R&D, situated within an inclusive company culture, have developed a curious workforce, keen to question, iterate, and innovate.
This ongoing journey has its foundations in a strong belief in systems and processes. Kumar has always been ISO-compliant, and as market conditions and customer requirements evolve, we have also updated our systems and processes. Since the start of my tenure, we've added a new R&D team, dedicated solely to innovating in oils and fats processing and downstream processes. All of these factors, combined with my need for continuous improvement, have helped Kumar retain its position as one of the best and largest global EPCC companies in India.
My guiding principles
Throughout this growth and evolution, I have kept my guiding principles of honesty, commitment, integrity, and sincerity front and centre. This is where my connection with Kumar Metal Industries is strongest.
Kumar has been in the business for 8 decades - and it has stood strong and steady for so long for a reason. Kumar has certain quality standards, and we never compromise. We don't give in to pressure from the competition. We don't give in to temptations to cut costs. We don't compromise on our ethics in pursuit of larger projects and bigger profits. This is exactly what has made Kumar the best EPCC company in India. Nearly 60% of our customers are repeat customers who insist on working with us again because they have experienced first-hand the quality and commitment that sets us apart.
Your wish, our command
Personally, as the CEO of a leading engineering company in the oils and fats industry, it's been gratifying to see how we've solved some highly specific problems for our customers.
Shea butter extraction? Mahua seed processing? What about moringa seeds? Or cashew nut shell liquid or CNSL? Maybe even grape seed oil? No problem!
Our commitment to curiosity and innovation means that we've hardly ever had to say no to a challenge. We've upskilled. Our R&D teams have developed new processes. And I'm proud to say we've developed some rare offerings.
Take grape seed oil, for example. Tree-borne oil seeds like these aren't cultivated often. And when they are - for instance, as a by-product in the winemaking industry - they are thrown away without any attempts at value creation. Where others saw waste, we at Kumar saw value. We partnered with our customers to create value in this relatively rare and unexplored niche. We've delivered a project to extract grape seed oil commercially in a plant with a high production capacity. In addition to the vegetable oil derived, we've also been able to make the cake suitable for the feed industry, with a high protein and fibre content. This is where our key strengths lie - to engineer and manufacture equipment for such specialised use cases.
Add to this our ability to build capabilities in markets that our competitors don't serve - even countries like Belize, where we had to overcome infrastructural challenges to deliver a characteristically high-quality project - and I'm proud to say that Kumar Metal Industries is unrivalled.
As CEO of a successful EPCC company in India, every day has been a challenge but a delight. From customer interactions to strategic brainstorming, every task, every meeting equips me with new observations and insights. From my experience at Kumar so far, I've found that with a focused approach towards the what and why, nothing comes in the way of the how.
Personally, I have got as much from Kumar as I have given, if not more. Taking Kumar from one height to another has strengthened my own capabilities and given me confidence. At Kumar, I've been in more challenging situations than in any other organisation. But the highly competent team here has got through these challenges without much stress at all.
When I came on board, we didn't imagine doubling our turnover; we were limiting ourselves to modest ambitions. But I'm proud to say that Kumar has realised its true potential. We've won orders and successfully executed projects that, at one time, seemed beyond our reach. With will and focus, we've truly lived up to the title of the best EPCC company in India. I cannot wait to see what the future holds in store for us.
