"This will pass and industries will get back to business soon, but hopefully in better organised and equipped way," says Jolad.

How would you analyse the machine tools industry's performance over the last one year in India?
It has been a roller coaster ride for many of us in machine tools industry. We saw market being upbeat about investments and also being very cautious one too.

Talking specifically about your organisation, how did you fare in comparison with the rest of the industry in the last year?
We have done fair amount of business in the machine tool industry segment for last year. Although most of part of the year was spent on brand building we were lucky enough to encash good amount of orders.

With concepts like Industry 4.0, Smart Factories and Digital Machining, customers today are demanding technological advancements like smart machines, connected machines and so on. How are you helping your customers on this front?
Our machines have always been top notch in the segment and were already equipped with 4.0 requirements. The machines are smart enough, robot compatible and automated to run without human interaction for a complete shift!!

Many machine makers are today supporting customers through a well-equipped technology center. Tell us about your initiatives in this regard.
We have opened a technology center two years ago for India, the technology center houses a machine of each technology that we represent. This helps customers understand what's new with our machines and how they can benefit.

SMEs form a key component of the Indian manufacturing segment. However, their needs and approaches are different than those of the large enterprises. How are you catering to their requirements?
SMEs need a lot of educating as compared to big organisations, this forms a huge part of our sales cycle. They also need a lot of guidance and support in terms of before and after they migrate to new technology. But it has its own fun to deal with SMEs and with big organisations.

3D Printing or Additive Manufacturing is slowly but steadily creating its place in the Indian manufacturing industry as well. How do you see it impacting your business?
3D printing will carve its own niche in the market and it doesn't mean it will gobble up any other segment of it. There is enough scope of machine tools that existed since many decades to co-exist and do their part of the manufacturing as everything can't be done with one technology.

The year 2019 hasn't been a great year for Indian manufacturing and obviously for the machine tool industry as well. Do you see the situation changing going ahead? How much of an impact will the Corono Virus outbreak is likely to have?
Epidemics and pandemics have affected human race before Corona too. This will pass and industries will get back to business soon, but hopefully in better organised and equipped way. This is a restart that no one could have afforded otherwise, and it better be an opportunity grabbed with both hands than a missed one.
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