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.