Indian Pneumatic & Hydraulic Company
Call (+91) 9820-984-284 (Anoop)
Company History
A brief insight into the journey of the IPH brand
The beginning : 1970s
In 1974, three engineers, Mr. TR Sreedharan, Mr. TRP Tilakan and Mr. K Gopalakrishnan, got together and founded IPH.
All three came from similar backgrounds, and had grown up within 100 km of each other. Having migrated to Mumbai in the 60's, each had worked in engineering companies producing quality products, thereby gaining the experience and knowhow required to eventually manufacture their own products. Acquainted with each other, they realised that they had a common vision of entrepreneurship, and the company was born.
In those days, setting up a manufacturing unit was not practical, with meagre financial resources, and poor support from the government and banks. It was further complicated by the numerous regulations, licences and permissions required at that time. However, with a lot of determination and hard work, the three young founders managed to lift the company to the position it occupies today.
The company initially started manufacturing in a 375 sq.ft leased shop at Ghatkopar, Mumbai, with one small lathe machine. With gradual growth, commensurate with the economic conditions prevalent at that time, IPH was able to add another shop of 750 sq.ft area within the same industrial estate. Till date, this is the registered address of the company.
Consolidation : 80s and 90s
Soon more machinery and employees were added, and IPH became a systematic manufacturer, with a small supply chain, and an increasing reputation for quality.
As a result of this, in the early 1990's, with a strong order book, the founders decided to augment the manufacturing capacity, and a factory outside Mumbai was setup.
With the two factories in operation, the company showed good growth, and was aided by the liberalisation of the economy in the 90's. Several customers such as Tata motors (then TELCO), HMT, Mahindra & Mahindra, SAIL Bhilai, Lokesh Machines, XLO, ISPL etc started trusting our design and engineering capabilities. With increasing customer confidence, IPH was entrusted with manufacturing cylinders with higher complexity, resulting in a lot of import replacements and import avoidance
Growth : 2000s
The period from 2002-03 saw rapid growth by the company. Within 5 years the turnover had almost tripled, and it seemed like the difficult days were over. This period coincided with the first person from the second generation of IPH, Mr. Anoop Sreedharan, joining the company in 2003. The company also benefited from a renewed venture into the steel mill industry, with customers like CMI (then Flat Products), Esmech (then Hollow Block) and Concast. The other strong sectors such as machine tool industry as well as hydropower were also going strong, and the period upto 2008 showed good growth
Mixed Fortunes : 2008 onwards
The global recession in 2008-09 saw a significant drop in orders. Since our customer portfolio straddled several sectors, we were able to survive the recession. Soon after, the world recovered, and there was strong growth for a few years, driven primarily by the steel industry
During this period, two CNC turning centers and a VMC were installed at our ghatkopar unit. There were several initiatives to improve delivery efficiency with the help of IT enabled programs, such as IPH Ordermaster, resulting in on-time delivery, as well as IPH Paymentrack, which monitored customer payments in a user friendly manner. Further process improvements were carried out in order to conform to customer requirements, and a separate planning department was also setup.
By 2013, the industry was again hit by recession, and this time IPH felt its strong tremors and hard impact, with growth completely stalled. The group was also hit by the untimely death of one of the founders Mr. Gopalakrishnan in 2014.
The Future :
Keeping an eye on the future, IPH had set in motion plans to further increase the production capacity of it's original factory at Ghatkopar. After a location was identified within a reasonable distance, the factory was shifted in early 2015 to Mahape, Navi Mumbai. With good planning and execution, very few man-days were lost due to the shifting, and the factory immediately began to operate at full efficency.
In order to obtain better operational headway, it was decided to operate a distinct sealing division at Ghatkopar, which would handle the spares arising out of the hundreds of thousands of cylinders installed all over India and abroad. This is a great step in the interest of customer service, and lead time of seal spares were greatly reduced.
The company went through a few years of labour union activity, and finally came out of that phase in 2021. Now, shifted to the current location at Bhiwandi, manufacturing activities have returned to normalcy.
The seal division at Ghatkopar has been merged with the manufacturing division, and all orders for seals are also being serviced at the Bhiwandi location.
Once again, with a strong order-book and infinite confidence, IPH looks forward to bigger challenges in the future!