The vast and incredibly proficient Prashant Group works relentlessly to achieve its goals, keeping the quality parameters at the forefront
Prashant Group is an industry leader in the weaving preparatory machinery market and has been consistently showing its class and quality for over four decades. The private limited organisation was established in 1975 and is presently one of the fastest-growing textile machine manufacturing companies. Besides the quality it offers, the company is also known for its collaborations with leading European and American companies that offer unique product portfolio enhancement and updated technology. The clear vision of Amoli Shah, Director, Prashant Group, is to serve the global textile weaving industry by offering world-class products at appropriate prices.
The company aims to ensure that this sector reaches the epitome of productivity, cost-efficiency and quality. To achieve this, Prashant Group has been providing equipment and machines with world-class and futuristic technology at reasonable rates. The vast and incredibly proficient Prashant Group works relentlessly to achieve its goals, keeping the quality parameters at the forefront. Says Amoli Shah: “The greatest source of strength and inspiration of Prashant Group lies in its manpower. The professional and dedicated team is focused on design innovation, operational excellence, and above all, customer satisfaction. The three words that define Prashant Group are customer-centric, growth-oriented and innovative.”
Performance and Innovation
What is the performance scenario of Prashant Group considering the disturbed scenario of 2020-2021? During the interview, Amoli Shah showed an incredibly positive approach taking the overall situation into consideration. According to her, after the pandemic started in the first few months of 2020, the situation was not very good as expected due to the lockdown scenario. However, since the end of 2020, the market demand has improved tremendously. “The present order position is decent in most divisions such as sectional working, sizing machine and trolley. Considering the current capacity, Prashant Group has reached 100% utilisation.”
“The best part is that the company has successfully launched two innovative products despite the pandemic scenario,” she adds. One of these is an exciting product called loom printer that can efficiently carry out transfer printing. This is quite an unfamiliar concept – a paper transfer technology in which the loom printer is placed between the loom and warp beam. Through a heat transfer mechanism, the paper design is transferred on to a warp sheet. This technology is used for manmade fibres like polyester and is used in applications like upholstery, home furnishing, sarees, dress material and other similar products.
This concept is for a highly creative niche market. For example, the ‘patola’ print is a very high-end saree design that also commands a high price. So, with the loom printer, you can get the same print, texture, and feeling, but at more affordable prices. According to Amoli Shah, this is a green technology. The traditional process required to wash the fabric after the printing process is complete. This technology does not need any after-process to wash dyes and chemicals, which saves lot of water. In addition, there is a list of other benefits. For example, the overall printing flexibility, creativity originality and exclusivity are some of them.
Besides, there is online printing during weaving and extra workforce is not required. The second product that Prashant Group has come up with is the high-technology electromagnetic tensioner. This ensures tension variation within the range of plus or minus 2%. Because of such precise tension control, the quality of the beam is excellent. Also, due to such precision, loom efficiency improves drastically. Plus, Prashant Group now has the patent for this incredible technology. Presently, it is working very well for the denim industries.
Being Different
According to Amoli Shah, the organisation is a one-stop solution for complete weaving preparatory machinery. Everything starting from sectional warping, direct warper, sizing machine for spun and filament, various creels, specialising machine for technical textiles warping, heavy-duty warper with specialised creel for PP and HDPE tapes, motorised and manual beam handling systems, inspection and packaging machine and beam storage system is a part of Prashant Group’s portfolio.
Amoli Shah and her associates believe that Prashant Group is different from several other competitors in the same industry. First of all, continuous research and development is an integral part of the group to develop and provide cutting-edge technology to the industry. There is a lot of automation going on, which means that it believes in technology advancement and innovativeness. If you take the example of a sectional warper, there are conventional sectional warpers, even high-technology. Yet, Prashant Group provides robotic sectional warping machine also which can reduce the labour requirement by one-third and space requirement by 50%.
In sectional warping, there is a lot of manual work as far as leasing is concerned. In robotic sectional warping machine, the complete leasing process is automatic. No human involvement is required unless there is a yarn break. The uniqueness of this machine is that it is ideal for regular production as well as for sampling. There are many advantages of this sectional warper. Adding more to automation, Prashant Group offers an automatic battery-operated trolley that will reduce the downtime on a loom by one-fourth. So, if companies install expensive air-jet machines, they can reduce the loom’s downtime to load and unload the beam.
Now, that is clear saving when the task is to handle 2 tons of wider width beams. To work with a manual trolley, there is a requirement of four people for loading and unloading huge beams. However, with this level of automation, only one person can do the job. Last but not the least, the vertical beam storage system by Prashant Group is entirely computerised to help save space, labour and time. When asked about their sales and service pattern, which is also the USP of Prashant Group, Amoli Shah says, “We have a professional sales team and regional sales people at different locations in India.”
“We also export to over 50 countries through our widespread agent networks. We have more than 40 service engineers all over India and we have regional engineers at most of the locations so that our customers get the required service on the same day, and in fact just a few hours. Apart from their interesting sales pattern, the fact that the oldest machine of Prashant Group (first sectional warpers manufactured and supplied to Grasim Bhiwani and Ruby Mill) is still working after 33 years of utility speaks tons about the organisation. “Customers are always looking for a better return on investment and what can be a better example than this?” Amoli Shah points out.
Presently, the vision of Prashant Gamatex, a part of Prashant Group, is to increase its production capability and strengthen marketing operations. The company would like to keep innovating new technologies but also focus on promoting its existing products in a better way. Plus, it wants to expand its market in India, Bangladesh, European and African countries. However, it wants to remain a private limited company only and achieve new heights to crank up its present turnover three-fold. Finally, the company has a mission of making everything more user-friendly and reduce the labour cost. With its present acquisitions and workforce, Prashant Group will surely be growing further in the global textile machinery market five years down the line.
—
“The present order position is decent in most divisions such as sectional working, sizing machine and trolley. Considering the current capacity, Prashant Group has reached 100% utilisation. The best part is that the company has successfully launched two innovative products despite the pandemic scenario.