Maruti is not so dependent on migrant workers. We have regular workers and we have temporary workers. There are, of course, some contract workers also but they are not migrants. They are here for a long term. The migrant problem does not really impact our ability to function at all.
But how can one address the problem of migrant labour? Should there be a line of communication where something needs to be done both in terms of protecting them and providing them food and shelter so that this kind of a mass exodus does not happen because that will defeat the entire purpose of lockdown?
I do not really claim to have any expertise or knowledge of this problem. But it seems to me that the whole economy has not developed the way it should have developed over the last 60-70 years, because of which, such large numbers of people from Bihar and eastern UP and other parts of India have to migrate long distances to look for work every year.
Why is this happening? Why are we not being able to fix this problem for so many decades? That is the root cause of the problem and there are no easy answers to this.These people come here for a season and there is no proper permanent residency or place where they can live or have homes. Their homes are still in villages. It is not a very satisfactory way of making a living anyway.
We understand Maruti has reached out to the government and said you are ready to use your mechanical skills to make ventilators. How many ventilators is Maruti in a position to produce and supply?
No, let me make it clear. We are not ourselves ventilator manufacturers. We do not have the expertise or the technology to make ventilators. What we therefore decided to do was that we will take on a company which does have the technology and the knowhow, whose ventilators are approved by the government of India but which is still a very small company. We plan to work with that company to rapidly scale up production volumes because we have skills of manufacturing in high volumes. There are not too many companies in India which have the skills to manufacture in large volumes and to scale up to the kind of volumes which we need in India today.
In pursuance of that idea, we found another company in the list given by the government, whose factory is in Noida and which was started just two years ago and still is very low in the volumes. But the product is approved by the government. We have now made an arrangement with this company and are working with them to scale up production.
We are hoping that this factory will start turning out larger numbers of ventilators in another eight, nine days. We are putting our vendors into this, we are putting our training systems into this. We are going to put our service facilities at the company’s disposal because once the ventilators go out in the field, they will require spare parts, servicing and people who are trained to operate them. These are comparatively new products and we are going to get into all those aspects. We will talk more about this when we have something concrete to talk about.
How are you helping the company when it comes to finances? What are the costs involved for the setup and distribution?
The working capital requirements and the capital requirements are not too much because the company itself is largely an assembler. The area which we have for assembling ventilators was comparatively small. We have identified and got a much bigger factory area where to take up manufacturing and assembling of substantially higher volumes of ventilators. The space is needed to store materials, for testing the ventilators and storing the finished products for packing and dispatch.
All the cost for scaling up production, getting into new things are going to be borne by us. We are not charging for this. We are giving the advice for free. We are working with the company to get the working capital finance sanctioned from the banks. They already have orders from the government and other sources and with Maruti backing, I am hoping that today the bankers will release the money for working capital requirements. Somebody who is doing a few hundred ventilators in a year and who wants to get up to may be a 100,000 ventilators a year, the entire ballgame is quite different.
Have you spoken to your global technology partner Suzuki in this case? Is there any technology available globally which could be brought into India and could ventilator production start at a mass level?
We have looked at it but please understand that the most critical factor today is time and if you are going to get technology from outside and all the components will have to then conform to that new technology. You have to render, develop for those components. It is going to take far too long to develop a ventilator with new technology. It is just not possible to produce ventilators and give it to the hospitals in the next 45 days. In 45 days, you will still be probably getting the drawing from Japan or wherever you go.
So, we looked at that option and ruled it out. This is not something which is feasible in the current circumstances. All the other manufacturers are doing what we are doing. Mahindra is working Skanray in Bangalore; BHEL and BEL have joined that same effort. The Indian ventilator manufacturers are comparatively very small scale and they need the support of companies like Maruti or BHEL or Mahindra to scale up production and that is the only way to do it. There is no other way.
Are you exploring tie ups or are you exploring extending your manufacturing support or your mass support to any other local manufacturers?
New technologies will complicate the manufacturing process. If the existing technology is alright, the best, the quickest and the most effective way is to just scale this up. As long as this technology works and is acceptable to the medical professionals, why should I look for a different technology?
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Flight of migrant workers not to impact Maruti: RC Bhargava - Economic Times
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