Delta Sambrani products have become the country’s leading brands. How was the journey so far?

I was primarily a tractor mechanic and always had an affinity for machines with a passion to do something new. The story of coming into this industry is also very interesting. On a fine Sunday of 1999, when food was being cooked at home, we needed coconut husk for fuel and all the shops near the house were closed. Then I saw a coconut on a tree near the house and brought it home. To use the coconut, I separated its husk. My son Suriya who is now the JMD of Deltas was just a child back then and was playing there. Suriya playfully dropped the box of Sambrani kept in the house near the coconut bark. This gave me an idea to mix that sambrani powder with coconut husk and put it in the burning wood and that spread a very lovely aroma. It was only after this that I got the idea of making Sambrani and further starting this business. I started the business with Rs 50,000 and production was carried out in a factory of 1000 square feet.

At that time the workforce was limited to only 3 people. I had a hard time entering the market and convincing customers but I did not stop. After a decade of hard work people started to understand the specialty of my product. Also, since I was passionate about machines and wanted to do something new, I would always think of ways of automating the production process as everyone in the industry was doing it manually with hand operated machines. Automation would save a lot of time in the production process and also reduce costs. In this way, we started using automatic machines in this field. Today, Delta’s state-of-theart production area is spread over 2,61,000 square feet. With 425 kW power supply and 5S program, it has a production capacity of 8-10 tonnes per day and the target is to reach the production capacity of 20-25 tonnes per day in the near future. Delta uses robotic technology to perform mass production with high quality. It provides employment to 450 people and also provides a unique employment opportunity to the women of nearby villages.