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From the National Games to the Olympic Games, it's been a voyage to cherish for Sunny Water SportsBy Sumit Kumar, Section Sports & Leisure  It's a bright summer morning in Rahatani in the Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial region of Maharashtra, some 15 kilometres away from Pune city. The locals appear oblivious to queries about the whereabouts of Sunny Water Sports, a Rs 5 crore manufacturer of boats. But a search-keyword, `boat', yields instant results as five hands point to the direction of an uncommon workshop.Over the next few minutes, the sight of a double-decker boat thrust in a gravel pit becomes hard to miss. This piece is still a work in progress. But two years ago, Sunny Water Sports became the first local manufacturer of such two-storeyed luxury boats in India. It was the shape of things to come. In the period since, it has built ties with original equipment manufacturers, dealers and equipment suppliers in Hungary and Pittsburgh, US, translating into orders beyond its domestic business. "In India, water-sports products range across three categories, but the requirements in Hungary are far more specialised," says Sunny Sebastian, Managing Director of Sunny Water Sports Products. "Boats there are classified by size, weight, gender, etc." More recently, an order for Hungarian company Regatta 2000 saw Sunny Water Sports develop 150 units--kayaks and row boats--that will feature in the Beijing Olympics this August. For Sebastian, who founded the company in 1990, the voyage has taken its own course, chiefly because he operates in a sports category that is relatively isolated in India: water sports. In the initial years, it would have been hard to gauge the level of interest in this business. But it has evolved--and the voyage has been one to cherish.
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Most of the interest in Sunny Water Sports' products (from Europe) has arisen because of what it has managed to do in the area of fibre-reinforced plastic (FRP) and polymer technologies, as well as because of the price it offers (15-25% less). Sebastian's high-end products are made of Kevlar, which is renowned world-over for its high strength-to-weight ratio. In effect, a long kayak made of Kevlar weighs 12 kg, while a canoe would rarely exceed 16 kg when designed for a single oarsman.
The polymer materials and Kevlar that Sunny Water Sports uses for its products are sourced from Europe, which costs at least Rs 15,000 per kilogram. Understandably then, the onus for the manufacturer--and the client--is on frugal manufacturing. Cost arbitrage apart, this Indian company offers two other critical pluses: quality standards and time of delivery. "Clients in Europe are absolutely particular about time, and there is no shortage of European players waiting to seize business," says Raja Hassan, the company's production manager.
Sebastian's first plant was built at a cost of Rs 1.5 crore. At any point of time, It conducts tests of two or three samples from each batch at a lake in Talegaon, situated four kilometres from the workshop. Sunny Water Sports has a trained team of four oarsmen for testing. With an increasing number of orders, Sebastian has had to scale up capacity. His second plant is being built at a cost of Rs 60 lakh, closer to the lake in Talegaon. Once complete, production of the double-decker boats will move from Rahatani to the new plant. The true challenge for the team continues to be handling FRP and polymer materials for water-sports products, but the company has also devised new lines of business--disaster relief products (lifejackets, lifebuoys, inflatable boats, etc) and tourism products (houseboats). It is now developing a series of eco-friendly boats. Currently, half its revenue is from water-sports products. Disaster relief and tourism form 25% each of the rest. Over more than 15 years, Sebastian has retained his first client: the College of Military Engineering in Dapodi, Pune, which bought Sunny Water Sports' first set of four boats in 1991. The army has been its biggest client, as they use such equipment for training. Business has evolved in other parts of the country ever since--like in Kerala for tourism. The National Games in Pune in 1994 was a boost for the water-sports business, and paved the way for quality accreditations from a number of agencies like the Rowing Federation of India, and the International Canoe Federation some years later.
Sailing upstream The climb to a Rs 5 crore company is far from what Sebastian imagined when he first moved to Pune in 1980. A native of Kerala, he joined his siblings here before enrolling in a technical programme in the then Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) company called Roplus India. This unit manufactured FRP rooftops for jeeps. After seven years with Roplus, Sebastian decided to start on his own by applying his technical knowledge in FRP to water-sports products. He began with a Rs 20,000 investment. The decision proved inspired for two reasons. First, Pune has had a culture of adventure-and water-sports. So, there was a latent market. Second, Pune's climate lent itself to such a business. "Fibre-glass moulding was only a natural process back then--not machine made. Today, there are composite technologies in use," he explains. The market has grown since, as has the eco-system for water sports on the outskirts of Pune. An Olympic medal for an Indian rower, Sebastian believes, will be the tipping point for a business like his. Source: Outlook Business, July 27-August 9, 2008 Issue
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