Sai Infraaequipments

16 February 2015


Sai Infraaequipments, based in Bangalore, was established in 1985 as an aggregate supplier. The company moved into excavation and transportation, working for Indian major contractors like Larsen and Toubro. In 2002, it added ready mix concrete, and in 2007, tower cranes and hoists. Managing director K.Ilango talked to Cranes Today about the company at bC India.

We offer services across the high rise building sector, where customers have adopted modern equipment concepts. On many of these sites, in the past, the concept was to use manpower. Now, increasingly, new technology has been adopted.

Along with batching and concrete equipment, we supply hydra cranes, tower cranes, and mobile cranes. We're working in residential, industrial, and power projects, all across India. We've recently received inquiries from Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Indonesia,

Singapore and Malaysia. We are going to erect some batching plants in Malaysia in the next quarter. We have 5-12t Chinese tower cranes, from Zoomlion, SYM and Sichuan ZTC, and tower cranes from Liebherr and Potain. Each of these Western manufacturers make up about 30% of our tower crane fleet. Recently, we bought a Jaso tower crane.

We have mobile cranes from Liebherr, Manitowoc, ACE and Alpha. Currently we hold the largest fleet of tower cranes in the hiring segment, and the third-largest fleet in the overall construction industry in India.

We plan to purchase new highercapacity cranes, because of the general expansion of the business in India. The power and water projects need higher-capacity cranes. The Indian government has invested $1trn in infrastructure development during FY 2013-17, this is an indicator for clearing pending projects and announcement of new projects in the pipeline. So we want to go for higher capacity all terrains and crawlers, up to 300t. For tower cranes we will want 30t machines for the precast field.

Today, as my company grows, we prefer only European brands. The Indian construction companies now, they prefer European brands for material handling hoists and cranes. If I purchase European cranes, it's a longterm investment. Our experience is that with a reputable brand, we can use the crane longer. Previously, we bought Chinese cranes which did a fair job, but now we think it is a better investment in terms of quality, standards, and maintenance to buy cranes from established brands.

30 years of working with some of the biggest clients in the Indian construction industry has helped us develop as a company that takes on challenges, and sees them through to completion. It is not just our satisfaction that counts; it is that of the client that matters most. It is for this reason we provide additional manpower support for installation and operation, as well as our diverse inventory and pan-India service. It's a competitive market, and we want to show our strength and capacity. Our customers get a good reputation based on their choice of brand of equipment along with our promising service. It's a prestige question, it shows you're setting your quality standards high. Though we own a huge fleet of equipment, when it comes to service, customer satisfaction is our top priority.