Esquire on expansion spree

Esquire Engineering Solutions, part of the Best & Crompton Group, is to expand operations beyond Chennai and Visakaphatnam. This fiscal will see Pune, Hyderabad and Coimbatore added to the list. M Anantha Padmanathan, CEO of B&C, said that Esquire is also in talks with some automakers in Europe and the US.

The company has set itself an ambitious target of increasing the share of exports in turnover nearly ten-fold from five percent to over 45 percent. Sales are expected to close this fiscal at Rs 5 crore and to Rs 50 crore in 2007-08 after the expansion in operations. The number of engineers will also be trebled to 200 from the present sixty-five.

Padmanathan said that the company has recently introduced a portable scanner that can move its arm in seven different axis without disturbing its position. It can scan any product up to eight feet in length and take 20,000 points per second. It also has a touch probe attachment option which is required in some automotive applications.

Incidentally, Esquire has a stationary scanner installed at its Visakhapatnam unit. It can scan objects of 1x1.5 metres - even a small two-wheeler can be scanned. A 3-D laser digitiser has also been installed here. The company has been offering a host of services which include legacy conversion, computational fluid dynamics and tool design. It undertakes turnkey projects and offers consultancy services. Esquire also imparts training to customers in taking up engineering services on their own.

In addition, it offers sales and aftermarket support. Reverse engineering is one of its key strengths. This helps vehicle/component manufacturers reduce the time to market and keep their costs in check. In the auto industry, Esquire caters to light and heavy commercial vehicles, passenger cars, two-wheelers, offroad vehicles as well as engine, transmission and component manufacturers. The auto sector accounts for over 40 percent of revenues.

The company is the licensee partner to Parametric Technical Corporation (PTC) in Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry. PTC owns ProEngineer software, which is used in design and engineering centres across the world. In the engineering services market, Esquire has been developing products for customers using CAD, CAM and CAE. It plans to make the most of the boom in engineering services outsourcing where the market size is estimated at $12 billion and India's total business is $500 million.