Powering a Brand: Rajeev Dalela

From starting a small company catering primarily to local needs in Gujarat, Kalpataru Projects International has grown exponentially to become a well-known and highly respected organization in India and abroad.

Rajeev Dalela attributes this meteoric growth to the company’s unwavering commitment to business ethics, customer-centricity, re-engineering processes and employee wellbeing.

When Dalela joined Kalpataru Projects International eight years ago, the organization was in a completely different position than it is today. On the one hand, it was more people-centric than process-centric; on the other, it was geographically distant from the reach of key customers.

"We undertook a mammoth exercise in restructuring. We organized everything into regional structures," he says. "The idea was to focus on project delivery and get closer to the customer."

Dalela has more than 35 years of industry experience, and during this time has seen project execution timelines drastically fall from around 35 months to fewer than 15 months.

"When your execution time crashes by almost 50 percent, you need your processes to be robust and your deliveries to be tight-knit in terms of engineering, procurement and construction. This requires changes in process as well as mindset," he explains.

Focusing on Processes

From its origins as a company with a local market in Gujarat, Kalpataru Projects International has come a long way to establish its global presence, Dalela tells The CEO Magazine.

"From 1999, Kalpataru entered center stage. Today we have built a brand that exceeds customer expectations in terms of delivery and quality," he says.

"We built Kalpataru as a very strong brand in India and we have now expanded to the international market with operations in over 60 countries, including in Latin America, Northern Europe, Australia, Africa and the Middle East."

So what powers Kalpataru Projects International? Dalela firmly believes that a strong team focusing completely on processes has been a key reason for the company’s progress.

"We believe re-engineering of processes should act as catalyst. Building robust enablers within the organization to meet and even exceed customer expectations is our top-most priority," he says.

To achieve this process orientation, Kalpataru Projects International’s employees had to update their understanding of both project management and the customer.

"This is why we tailor-made a project management course in collaboration with SP Jain Institute of Management and Research Mumbai for our key executors, so they could learn modern concepts in project management organization to meet and even exceed customer expectations, which is our priority," he explains.

"Today, when we talk, we all talk the same language."

Working Together

"We have a strong talent pool of professionals with high levels of commitment, skills, ethics and integrity," he says, emphasizing that people are Kalpataru Projects International’s key asset.

"Business ethics, customer-centricity and teamwork are the core mantras that we have been inculcating in every member of the Kalpataru family."

Dalela firmly believes that team spirit is as essential as having skilled professionals to do the work. "At the end of the day, I am only as good as my team," he explains.

"My focus has always been to build a capable team that can share the same values in terms of ethics, customer-centricity and respect that I do."

Having a dependable supply chain is another vital energizer, Dalela reveals. While Kalpataru Projects International has its manufacturing setup with two plants and a tower test station, the supply of conductors is an important aspect of the delivery process for which the company has strong ties with vendors like APAR Industries and Sterlite.

"We have a robust relationship with vendors based on mutual trust and engagement. In our line, it’s not only important to have our production streamlined, but also essential to have a dependable channel partner for the supply of conductors and other hardware," he says.

Powering Ahead

Since 1999, when the company decided to expand, Kalpataru Projects International has been charging ahead. However, the past three-to-four years have been challenging for the business, not just because of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, but also because of various other roadblocks.

A major challenge among these was the fact that solar parks were not permitted to be established in the vast desert areas of Rajasthan in order to protect the Great Indian Bustard, an endangered bird native to that region.

Dalela explains that after a lot of discussion and legal parley, a mandate was passed to get the transmission lines constructed. After this, he says, a barrage of new tenders started coming in.

"Going forward, I see a great opportunity, as the Indian government plans to have at least 500-gigawatt capacity of renewable energy set up by 2030 to meet the goals of climate change," he says.

With this government push, combined with an increasing volume of tenders, the future is certainly looking bright for Kalpataru Projects International, according to Dalela.

"We believe several projects are already underway in Gujarat and Rajasthan, and foresee a big pipeline of projects is likely to come our way as well," he says. "We are very hopeful as we see a major jump in business for the transmission and the substation sector."