ASHISH BHARAT RAM, the Chairman & MD of SRF Ltd, believes he is like the conductor of an orchestra, playing a symphony. And one indeed needs the poise of a conductor to manage SRF’s diverse portfolio of unrelated products. To understand this, one needs to look at the company’s evolution. SRF started life as Shri Ram Fibres, a technical textiles and tyre cord manufacturer, in the 1970s, before diversifying into refrigerant gases in the late 1980s; in the mid-1990s, the company got into polyester films (that was used for VHS tapes and audio cassettes back then), which has since then transformed into its packaging films business. That’s quite a handful for the 54-year-old, who has grown the company into a major global conglomerate today. Bharat Ram has also expanded the packaging films business to Thailand, South Africa, and Hungary; today, chemicals contribute 42 per cent to SRF’s top line, packaging films 38 per cent, with technical textiles and other businesses making up the rest.
SRF, says Bharat Ram, looks at innovation and technology as game changers. And while the easiest way is to buy and partner with technology, SRF took a different route. In the early 2000s, the company set up its R&D team to develop technology in-house. “We do our own R&D for all the molecules that our customers want and don’t buy technology unless we really need to buy it. And I think that sets us apart because we are significantly ahead of many of our competitors in India,” he says proudly. This explains why SRF is the only Indian manufacturer of ozone-friendly refrigerants such as F134a and F32, the technology to produce which was developed in-house. As of December 31, 2022, it had applied for 398 patents, while it had been granted 130 patents.
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