Nitin Damle wanted to work on engines after his graduation from COEP in 1984. How he ended up in textiles is an interesting story. The eighties were a time when the only good manufacturing companies to join recruited only very few engineers from the COEP campus. The rest had to join low paying jobs in the small sector industries of MIDC. Becoming an entrepreneur was an attractive option, since the alternatives were not too attractive. Having decided to get into entrepreneurship, Nitin consulted with an uncle, who was a role model for him. Uncle suggested that the opportunity then was to make gabardene shorts. For those of you who grew up in the seventies and eighties you will remember this as a tight fitting short, which I remember being embarrassed wearing – as it revealed more than it hid. But for some reason these sold like hot cakes – and Nitin found that his entrepreneurial career was off to a profitable start. 

The problem with being profitable early on in your business is that it is an anti-pivot. So you continue to do what you do, even if your heart is not fully into it. But like the saying goes, the best marriages are those that start in arranged and end in love. Nitin’s love affair with textiles continued to bloom and Skylark, the company that he runs, shifted to newer songs. He found his calling in working with the automobile sector, where he used his engineering skills to reduce costs of rework. His area of focus was the body and the paint shop, as this is where the aesthetics matter the most. In any vehicle build, the operator can end up damaging the vehicle painted surface because of a slipped tool. And even a simple scratch costs more than Rs. 2500 to repair. Nitin convinced auto companies to invest in protective covers in the cab assembly area to save these costs. He was a pioneer in the field, and so it took a lot of free pilots and repeated plant visits for convincing auto companies to adopt this practice. He used his engineering ingenuity to add magnets into the cover for attachment to the body. He would also add extra padding where the chances of damage were higher. After a few months of trials – Tata Motors started seeing the benefits in terms of reduced rework costs. And orders started coming in. Soon, the rest of the industry followed. He added innovations in attachments for companies like Jaguar, which have all aluminium bodies (incidentally the bodies are imported directly from the UK – Indian operations are too small to justify the cost of dies and aluminium welding.)

Vendors of plastic components became another key customer – as there were instances of almost 30% of parts being damaged in transit. For parts like bumpers, this was a direct hit on aesthetics. The protective covers recovered costs in a matter of weeks. Transit covers also were greener – as they would be reused, in contrast to the bubble wrap sheets – which had to be thrown away after each use. (Should discuss the CEE EV battery protective cover with Nitin some time.)

Another complementary area that emerged was the paint shop. It’s an enclosed high temperature area with a lot of volatiles floating around. And it’s literally a holi-day inside everyday. These holi-days require special clothing – and not only because it gets sprayed on by different colors. But also because static electricity created as the cloth fibres rub each other, can create sparks and fires inside the paint area. The polyester dungarees worn by the paint booth operators are treated with special anti static chemicals to avoid these sparks. I asked Nitin why not cotton? Cotton lints can get caught on to the surface of the metal thereby hampering the finish quality. Polyester pieces don’t float around like cotton ones do. 

One of the interesting assignments that Nitin did was with the CRPF training center at  Dehu Road. CRPF Personnel are required to go through bomb disposal training. Each of the special imported suits weighs 29 kg and costs Rs. 12 lakh. Nitin made a replica suit which matched the imported suit closely and could be used for training purposes. The replica suit was so good that the CRPF folks wanted to know if it can actually be used in real life situations. Alas, DuPont, the kevlar fabric supplier, only issues this material to government agencies – and that too after a lot of due diligence. So Nitin could not diversify into this very interesting area.

The Skylark team is now 20 strong and Nitin has a very able assistant who handles day to day operations. She has been with Skylark for the past 5 years and has been able to successfully push Nitin into semi-retirement mode. Nitin is now looking at inducting some more fresh blood into the system in order to make forays into the pharma sector. Promising times ahead – and I wished I were 20 years younger and could have taken up the offer. Any thirty year olds who want to fly high with the Skylarks are welcome to get in touch!!