Stratmont Industries is primarily involved in piling and filing equipment rental and contracting. Manavika Agarwal of Stratmont Industries speaks on the various services offered by the company.

Can you tell us a little bit about your company and the services it offers?

Stratmont Industries is primarily involved in piling and filing equipment rental and contracting. We are working on projects across India, with notable completed projects in Gujarat, particularly at the NCC site at Mundra Port, Gujarat. We are currently taking on 6 to 7 other contracts all over the country. In addition to our core work, we also have a coal manufacturing and trading arm, as well as a spiral saw pipe setup based in Kutch, Gujarat. We are into steel trading, dealing both in primary and secondary steel.

So, is piling and piling equipment your only focus?

I would say that piling is our main area of expertise. However, we do have diversification through our coal manufacturing, trading arm, and steel dealings.

Can you elaborate on how you handle the financial aspects of your projects?

With God’s grace, we’ve been able to provide a range of financing options for our clients. The piling industry isn’t the most liquid one, but we’ve configured our operations in a way that allows us to manage financing issues better than most. We’re fortunate to be cash-rich, and this is one of the major advantages in the piling sector. Since piling is usually the first stage of a project, we often face fewer payment delays. We’re typically the first ones to get our payments and also the first ones to bring our machinery on-site, which makes financing much smoother for us.

So, what are some of the challenges you face in the industry?

Honestly, there are no major challenges. The primary challenge for us is deciding which projects to take on. For most of the year, we are fully occupied, except for a couple of months during the off-season. In India, infrastructure work is essentially year-round, so there’s always a constant demand. The real challenge is the rapid pace at which the industry is growing. We have to keep up with that growth, or else we risk falling behind. If you're not growing with the industry, you're not performing well enough.

What about the maintenance aspect of your equipment? How do you handle that?

We manage maintenance by consistently updating our fleet. Every year, we add new machines to our fleet. In fact, this year alone, we’ve added around five machines, and we plan to continue expanding in 2025. It's a rotating cycle where we add new machines and sell the older ones. This approach significantly reduces our maintenance costs because newer machines require less maintenance. On average, our machine fleet age is 3.2 years, which is much lower than five years. Maintenance costs typically rise after five years, so by keeping the fleet younger, we ensure costs stay manageable.

As a group, including Stratmont and Mindspace, we have around 25 machines, all focused on piling. It’s a substantial fleet that helps us meet the demands of our projects.