Unnikrishnan Nair PM, Chairman and Managing Director, Anlon Technology Solutions Ltd.

In conversation with Unnikrishnan Nair PM, Chairman and Managing Director of Anlon Technology Solutions Ltd., we explore the company’s transformative journey in modernizing India’s aviation sector and expanding into industrial safety solutions. From airports to electric vehicle safety, learn about the company’s diversified growth and vision for the future.

Tune in to the entire conversation below:

 

Hi, this is Rumela Banerjee. I have with me today Unnikrishnan Nair, PM, Chairman and Managing Director at Anlon Technology Solutions Ltd. Thank you for joining us on Small Cap Spotlight.

 

Anlon Technology Solutions is a provider of quality life-saving and lifecycle support for various high-end infra projects. It is headquartered in Mumbai. Let’s know about its journey so far and plans ahead.

 

What inspired the founding of Anlon in 2015, particularly at a time when India’s aviation sector was just beginning to expand?

 

Unnikrishnan Nair PM: The inspiration story dates back actually to the mid-90s, when the government of that day opened up the economy. I’m talking about 1993-94. I was part of a team which brought a technology to make automotive components.

 

We were heavily dependent on the Western market, especially the US for many different kinds of automotive equipment. So I was part of a team to establish a very old, well-known, one of the world’s largest gear cutting machine manufacturers to India. That was a very big success.

 

This company had a world market share of something like close to 90-95%. They say that 95% of the world’s rear-wheel drive vehicles, that is truck, buses, SUVs, would have passed through a Gleason machine. This was a very good success.

 

I was part of the transition team to learn from them how to make cutting tools, how to get these machines done in India way back in the mid-90s. This inspired me that several such technologies can be brought to India. From early 2000, I was part of a team that wanted to bring modern type of and much more safe type of baggage handling system to India.

 

So that gave me an opportunity to discuss with several airport buyers. Those days, predominantly, there were only two airport buyers. One is Airport Authority of India.

 

The other is Cochin. There was a necessity that IATA made compulsory that we need systems for baggage handling where the passenger will have no access to his bag once he leaves at the check-in counter. These systems run through the airport building.

 

So it gave me a good opportunity to deal with all sections like electrical, architecture, building construction team, mechanical, MEP, mechanical, electrical, plumbing, equipment people. So with this background, in 2005, when the airport market opened up, it gave me a good platform to introduce modern equipment because it is a very significant milestone in the history of Indian aviation that we came into a regime where International Civil Aviation Organization will do the quality audit of each of our airports. That brought us to a situation where we need to use good quality modern equipment.

 

And with nearly about 10 years of experience in bringing this transitional and transformative technologies to the country, this was a good inspiration for me to be part of this process. That is how we started Unloan operations. In the earlier days, it was for baggage handling system, but we later we focused mainly on bringing airside equipment for various safety related aspects of airports into the country.

 

So this is a little bit brief about how we started and what inspired. Basically, because the country needed good quality and modern equipment, and also needed good quality after sales support. So this was a great opportunity for us to establish a business line, as well as to support the modernization process of Indian aviation.

 

Rumela Banerjee: Your exclusive partnership with Rosenbauer since 2008 have been crucial. Could you share how this relationship developed and how it shaped Unloan’s early trajectory?

 

Unnikrishnan Nair PM: Yes. So when we say exclusive, we are exclusive to the specific market area that have been assigned to us, which means we are responsible for all modern type of airports.

 

They call the new generation airports, which are public-private partnership model, PPP model airports. We are responsible for all industries across petrochemical, chemical factories, glass paint manufacturers, and all over India. We are responsible for all state government and municipal corporation fire and emergency services.

 

This is in the business revenue line of mobile firefighting, rescue, evacuation, and the training of professionals in that area. So in this area, we are exclusive. What brought us closer to each other, and this is now, let’s say, an 18-year-old relationship with one of the world’s largest exporters of fire engines.

 

Not one of, they are the world’s largest exporters of fire engines. The philosophy of after-sales support timely, because this is an area where the customer can’t wait for a long time to get a part or fix the issue that they are facing, number one. Number two, most of this equipment used electronic software-controlled modern type of components, because by then, due to the requirement of emission norms, most of the engine manufacturers, gearbox manufacturers, everybody has shifted to the most modern type of electronic-controlled equipment, and therefore, there was a need to look after them very closely.

 

And if you are not able to maintain on a periodic basis, regular attention is required on this component, then the machines will not function well. So there was a need for that. Our associates found that we are a reliable partner in looking after their machines, and the Austrian-German equipment manufacturers, they work on a long-term partnership model.

 

The advantage is that most of the original equipment manufacturers in this part of the world would like to be actively involved in the after-sales support of their machines. They don’t believe in letting the dealer decide what to do. We just need the spare parts and service income.

 

That’s not the way they operate. So it was a good partnership that we forged. Wherever their presence was required, they came in.

 

In fact, they helped us to relocate. Those days, we did not have this modern type of truck technology available anywhere in India. People like Volvo, companies like Volvo, Mercedes, MAN, all these guys were just getting established in India.

 

So we didn’t have experienced technicians on these technologies. So this partnership worked very well that we were able to relocate expats who would like to come home to India, who are experts on these technologies. We helped them to relocate to India from the Middle East, North Africa, Eastern Europe, and then we built up the service team.

 

Today, this partnership of high-quality equipment from original equipment manufacturers and a very effective service and spare parts network has really worked well. Over a period of time, this partnership has really flourished and we became successful in the market.

 

Rumela Banerjee: You’re transitioning from a commission-based model to direct manufacturing with your Bangalore plant.

 

What drove the strategic shift and how does it change your competitive position?

 

Unnikrishnan Nair PM: One of the predominant reasons is that our equipment is working on an automotive chassis. Our partner in Austria, they have been using chassis made by Volvo, Mercedes-Benz, MAN, Scania, Renault, all these trucks. In the last few years, most of these European manufacturers wanted us to use their own Indian subsidiary manufactured chassis.

 

So in our industry, there was a need for us to shift to Indian manufactured chassis, number one. Number two, after using these kinds of trucks for 10 to 15 years, we have literally gone through a life cycle of these products. We ourselves have become confident that in assembly and putting together all these components and parts is possible by us.

 

So that there was some confidence which we conveyed to the original equipment manufacturers, our partners. They also felt the same. Yes, this is possible by Anlon and some of them encouraged us saying that, okay, let’s look at doing this in India.

 

So this is a result of our relationship with these OEMs for over now, a decade and a half of working together. Thirdly, it’s a vision of our Honorable Prime Minister, Mr. Narendra Modi, that we have to become Atma Nirbhar Bharat. This has inspired all of us that we have to grow to be capable of maximum capability to have maximum capability and resolve to make these modern types of machines in India, which has really sped up the operations or the plans for doing this.

 

And lastly, the country and the industry, especially aviation would become much more cost efficient. And this will actually add to the sustainability of the industry itself, that our aviation industry, sometimes there are a lot of complaints about the high cost of travel and all these things. So we will contribute significantly to make it much more economical because several service equipment in the aviation sector, in the petrochemical sector, in many of the municipal corporation safety sector will become much more economical and much more reliable because many of these parts and service can be made available from India itself.

 

So overall, we are depending on quite a lot of Indian fabricated and manufactured components. We are going to be dependent on Indian made spare parts and we continue to have service facilities available from India. And overall, it will help our industry work in a most cost efficient way.

 

Rumela Banerjee: The new partnerships with Lion Protects, BBN, Bridge Hill, AS seem to be expanding your focus beyond airports into EVs and industrial safety. Is this diversification a deliberate strategy?

 

Unnikrishnan Nair PM: Yes. So Lion Protects is one of the world leaders in a particular type of personal protective equipment for firefighting, rescue and evacuation.

 

They have a particular type of certification, which is NFPA. This is widely acknowledged in some sections of the industry. So up to now, we were only giving European certifications and now we are able to work in the area where an NFPA certificate is required.

 

Lion Protects also make firefighting simulators. This is very important for our country. See, our young men are getting trained for firefighting, rescue and evacuation in one of the institutes.

 

Unfortunately, at the moment, we have a great population of firefighters, but they have only access to theoretical training and a very limited practical training. And they learn on the job as well. We have a very good fraternity of firefighters for sure.

 

With Lion Protects and our partnership will aim to prepare firefighters in a digital world. This means that he will not spend any water or foam and we will give him an atmosphere of being in a virtual fire. So there are digital simulators, which will condition their minds.

 

It’s one thing to watch a movie on firefighting and see a channel news on firefighting, quite another to be in that situation. So this will help psychologically and in terms of firefighting tactics and strategies for our firefighter to be prepared very well, that we will provide them with a digital virtual firefighting environment. So they have these firefighting rooms where the walls are built with digital screens and they simulate and they can even have a hose and a monitor or the firefighting equipment in their hand.

 

They will be wearing the full PPE. So this will be quite a close simulation of an actual fire scenario. This is the second thing.

 

The third thing is Lion Protects is a world leader also in live firefighting training. So that means we can have models, replica of aircrafts wired with, let’s say, for example, kerosene vapors, which can be calibrated, which can create calibrated fires and let our firefighters go and experience fire inside an aircraft or let’s say fight an engine fire. And this is live fire.

 

This is a third stage. This is very much required and most of the developed countries have this facility. Unfortunately, India doesn’t have even a single live fire fighting simulator.

 

So we will be working very closely in the months to come, in the years to come with most of the airport operators to have a live fire training for their, not only for airport operators, but also for petrochemical and other chemical industries, people. So they will have a real feel of fighting fire under a guarded calibrated monitoring system. So this is Lion Protects.

 

There are many other things with Lion Protects. We are working on looking at, let’s say, a training institute together with them. This is in the preliminary stages.

 

And Bridge Hill, they make, see at the moment, we are at a very rapid, really high speed rate. We are introducing electrical vehicles. However, we need to catch up with the safety in terms of, especially the unexpected fire breakouts in several of these electrical vehicles.

 

So Bridge Hill, Norway, they make blankets, fire blankets. So we have two solutions. One is, these fire blankets will protect a passenger car or any of those kinds of equipment, like a buggy, battery-operated buggy, a passenger car, whatever, or a light motor vehicle.

 

You can cover the vehicle with the blanket so that we cut off oxygen and we stop the possibility of this fire spreading to a battery. If, unfortunately, the battery catches fire, then it may result in an explosion. So the primary aim with the Bridge Hill products is to stop an explosion where a fire can reach the battery.

 

We have a separate system that will fight fires once the battery catches fire, but this is from our traditional partners Rosenbauer. So Lion Products is to train people and to have better, not better, but a certain different certified personal protective equipment for firefighters and rescue and evacuation operators. And Bridge Hill is for the growing demand in the market for electrical vehicles and the safety of the same.

 

Rumela Banerjee: Your revenue model shows 35 to 40 percent coming from spare parts and EMC. With the new manufacturing plant, how do you see this mix evolving?

 

Unnikrishnan Nair PM: It is too early to predict at the moment how this will develop, but we are fully loaded in the first year itself. We are very, we are not gripping about it.

 

We are happy about it, but it’s a typical situation where you are, let’s say, you are joining the Montessori and you have to write an essay there. So very similar to that, in the beginning of the year, as we established our facility, we are making about, let’s say, seven large machines and we are also doing some medium-sized, small-sized, another nine equipment. This is a combination of airports as well as an automotive giant.

 

So at the moment, it seems that we will, we have quite a handful, almost equal to what we are doing on the other side of our traditional business. And at the same time, the dependence on service and spare parts is not going to decrease because the age of the vehicles are going to increase. And Indian market, this has been a great year for us.

 

We are adding quite a significant number of airport fire engines into the country this year, probably one of the largest, one of the best years for us in the traditional business sales of mobile firefighting equipment.

 

Rumela Banerjee: While airports contribute 80% of your revenues, you are also serving refineries and municipalities. Which non-aviation segments excite you most?

 

Unnikrishnan Nair PM: We are now, from this year onwards, we are very actively working with many of the petrochemical establishments for supporting them with special equipment.

 

We have a very special product called Hazardous Materials Truck. We call it Hazmat. The oil and gas industry safety norms have introduced some need for certain equipment.

 

Our associates are very good in those equipment. We are looking at a Make in India model for high-rise building rescue machines in India, which is one of the most exciting avenues for us in the months to come, in the years to come. We are at the moment working on a technology transfer platform.

 

Last week, the German team was here, discussing with the Indian chassis manufacturers like Aisher, like Mercedes-Benz, sorry Bharat Benz, to arrive at a suitable design and then application engineering development for India-based manufacturing of high-rise building rescue and evacuation equipment. So, in the months to come, this will become fruitful. We have almost come to close of the engineering discussions.

 

So, the areas that would be very exciting will be bringing in technology and merging with Indian available components in the area of mobile firefighting in non-aviation sector. Our country has about 28 states and 722 municipal corporations and hundreds of industries. We are looking at bringing premium technology from our partners from Germany and Austria, making use of the available components and equipment that are available in India, especially the automotive chassis, and giving the market a much better product at a more economical cost.

 

We probably cannot match the local industry at the moment, but we will come somewhere closer to the expectation of the civil municipal industry market in India. This is our next aim.

 

Rumela Banerjee: Your international footprint is growing. Which global markets offer the most promising opportunities beyond India?

 

Unnikrishnan Nair PM: One thing I would like to bring to the attention of all our stakeholders and our partners is that, some time ago when we said we are starting manufacturing, all our partners, I mean, we have a great extended family, now it has grown really well since our IPO. They expected that, okay, manufacturing is, this is batch production, every month they will make hundreds of equipment and this will be sold. But our industry is very different in nature.

 

We are in a niche market where the components cycle time to get a component is about any time eight to nine months. We cannot use off the shelf products. So, our manufacturing cycle is slightly longer and we cannot do a monthly production volume.

 

This is probably, we failed to communicate this to our partners. So, we work on a niche product market and this is a slightly longer cycle time when it comes to international market. But however, our German partner recently commented that compared to what prototype they brought out 15, 20 years ago, he told me that we are 10 times faster in turning around a prototype.

 

But unlike the batch production of passenger cars or equipment like that, this is a very different industry all over the world. Not only here, Europe and the United States take 14 to 18 months for turning around a truck or a machine like this. Now coming to the international market, we are looking forward to the completion of the first runway rubber removal machine in the next weeks.

 

And this will be sent to a combatant center in Germany for extensive testing and quality validation. So, this means that the process that we started sometime in let us say March, April this year is coming to a good conclusion and a fruitful stage where we are now able to send first time a machine from India, built in India for extensive testing in Germany and they will validate and they will see for themselves what quality and what performance it does. And we believe that this will open up great opportunities all around the world.

 

We look forward to having a partnership with them in expanding our market segments. So, this is the first one.

 

However, the other products are in the making. We are making, let’s say, many small to medium size equipment. This will be also inspected by our partners when they come to India before handing over to a major automotive company.

 

All these orders we have uploaded. So that will be the second phase. In products like friction testing, in products like runway rubber removal, we have a wide global market that is available in friction testing except in the United States.

 

Because the United States is a market of our own OEM partner. Yeah, so we are excited to look at expanded market possibilities for some of these machines which are manufactured here. But this has to pass through a quality validation and performance testing.

 

This will be carried out sometime in January in the coming year.

 

Rumela Banerjee: With EV safety becoming crucial, how do you see the fire safety equipment market evolving beyond traditional applications?

 

Unnikrishnan Nair PM: The major difference is that in terms of a fuel tank and fuel consumption systems, in place of that it will be a battery-operated system. It’s a high-voltage system.

 

It’s a DC, normally automotive equipment work on DC. But we are looking at containing everything or, let’s say, reducing the risks of fires around battery. Like I said, the fire-bridged blankets is the first step.

 

We have also, our partners have developed a very special equipment that will pierce a battery and it will flood extinguishing agents inside a battery. It’s a very unique product that we have developed. And many, many automotive companies have shown interest in that.

 

We are doing many demos. So, this is an extensive safety equipment that can be applied for battery fires. So, we are working on these two areas.

 

Rumela Banerjee: If you could tell us about the key people helping you execute your vision within the management team, what role do they play in helping you achieve the company’s goals?

 

Unnikrishnan Nair PM: We have, in terms of the engineering and product design, we have a team who have been, we are not doing anything that we are not familiar with. So, we have a team who have been servicing these machines for the last 18 years. Some of them have shown interest to move to manufacturing.

 

So, we have senior people who have been attending to these machines. We have a gentleman whose name is Krishna Bawar. He has experience of over 30 years in this field.

 

He was earlier, I mean, 30 years he was on Rosenbauer Systems. So, he is part of the engineering and technical support team. We have a very senior person who has been servicing these machines for a very long time.

 

Now, he has been also been transferred to manufacturing department called Vishwanoop Nair. We have a finance team headed by my colleague, Chief Financial Officer Mr. Emmanuel. He is a chartered accountant, quite familiar with these processes.

 

He is helping us in financial strategies and mainly the financial control of the company. We have an experienced company secretary and the legal advisory team headed by Ms. Payal Gupta. We have a commercial team who are handling procurements.

 

It is very critical that we get the right quality products in time because these kinds of equipment the market is not very familiar with. So, quite a lot of time is spent on educating them to prepare good components. So, we have a techno-commercial team who is handling that.

 

We are regularly doing import of equipment, spare parts, all these things. This commercial team is headed by Mr. Joy George. He operates from Mumbai.

 

He heads the commercial department and is supported by a team of around a dozen people helping him to create proposals. In logistics management, custom clearance etc. and also the order processing of all these equipment.

 

So, we have a fairly matured and knowledgeable team. I am gifted. I am very fortunate to have this team who is the main asset of the company who are helping us in this growth.