Mr. Deepak, CEO, Innato Enterprises, and Mr. Emanuele Ulisse, Area Manager, Mondolfo Ferro Spa
Innato Enterprises is the latest company to join the growing competition in the garage equipment space in India. Founded in 2011, the Coimbatore-based company initially focused on a paper-related business before it found an interesting opportunity to join the race for tapping the enormous potential of the country’s automotive service sector. It joined hands with Mondolfo Ferro of Italy in 2013 and now offers a range of high quality wheel service equipment made by its European partner. Mondolfo Ferro has over five decades of experience in the garage equipment industry with five plants in Italy which turn out the more sophisticated premium range products. It has its sole facility in China to manufacture the more cost-competitive yet qualitative machines.
Innato has taken a dual-route approach to penetrate the domestic market. The company offers both the Italy-made premium products and also the China-built basic equipment to be able to satisfy the needs of different customers in the country. As part of its two-fold strategy, Innato will look to market its products using its cost-competitive basic level items to woo customers who are relatively new to the field, while it would approach the experienced long-term focused customers with its premium equipment.
The company’s gameplan seems to be working out quite well as evident in the reasonably good number of orders received in its first year of operation. In a one-to-one interaction with MOTORINDIA, Mr. Deepak, CEO, Innato Enterprises, says: “We partnered Mondolfo Ferro in late 2013 and have been very active from the start of 2014. We have already delivered 12 basic packages (wheel aligner, wheel balancer and tyre changer), two high-end packages and one truck alignment system to customers in different parts of the country. We are happy to have made a good start and hope to get better in the coming years”.
Mondolfo Ferro’s partnership with Innato and its defined strategy for the Indian market clearly indicate the Italian company’s focus on India. Says Mr. Emanuele Ulisse, Area Manager, Mondolfo Ferro Spa: “Mondolfo Ferro is focusing on the fastest growing markets in Asia, and India is definitely one of our priorities. We are capable of offering a complete range of equipment from the top range to the basic ones and are able to cater to the entire customer requirements in India. Our idea is to have constant presence and constant growth in the market. Compared to one year back, the market conditions are much better at the moment, and we have very high expectations from the Indian market in the next few years. This year has been good. However, we expect further growth from next year.”
Focusing on service
Knowing how the garage equipment segment operates, Innato has been pro-active in its focus on growing trends like technology and also on critical aspects such as service back-up. “Technology is the main strength of Innato. Customers in the market might face problems with their existing equipment, and when they come to us, they will benefit from Mondolfo Ferro’s superior technology which will help solve their problems. We have also been focusing a lot on providing strong service support to our customers because the first question customers ask us is about our service team. Keeping this in mind, we have developed a 15-man sales and service team, of which 12 can handle service and four can do both sales and service. We have covered multiple locations in the country, including Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Chennai and Coimbatore. We also have dealers in States like Kerala, UP and Gujarat where we also look at having our own representation in future”, adds Mr. Deepak.
With a catchy tagline of ‘MF yourself’ (MF referring to Mondolfo Ferro), Innato currently works only with the Italian brand for wheel service equipment. It will be adding two-post lifts, four-post lifts, scissor lifts and other upgraded equipment from the same partner’s stable but does not intend to add any more principals in the particular segment though it has aggressive plans to expand into other areas in the near future. “We will be bringing in a completely new technology for vehicle repair in the Indian market. We had initially planned display of the products at Autoserve, but could not go ahead and are now planning to showcase them at ACMA Automechanika in New Delhi next year”, he says.
Innato has clocked revenue of around Rs. 1.5 crores from April to November in the current year and has set a target of clocking Rs. 6 crores in the next fiscal. The company seems buoyed by the response it has received in regions like Gujarat, Rajasthan and Punjab and is confident of a further boost in sales in other northern markets following its participation in the ACMA Automechanika fair.