Introducing Veera Mahajan, President, Ranal Inc. 

Veera Mahajan is the founder and President of Ranal Inc., a privately held corporation founded in 1995 in US. Ranal commenced Indian operations in the year 2000 at Bangalore and in 2005 at Pune.

A  technology conglomerate, the Ranal Group provides solutions, services and resources around emerging and industry proven information technology areas. When Mahajan speaks of the group being backed by decades of experience in technology areas such as CAD/CAM/CAE/PLM, robotics and off-line programming, manufacturing process planning and management, program/project management, digital manufacturing and cPLM, it doesn't really come as a surprise considering the wealth of IT and other experience she, her husband and her well appointed team bring to the business.

Off-shoring - back in the 1980s

What does stand out is the fact that Mahajan has been driving off-shoring business for engineering since 1985, a time when she correctly points out, "there was no internet or email." Evidently then, as she continues, they've had "all these years to develop the expertise and business models required to make engineering outsourcing successful." Today, she counts these flexible and unique business models as a key success factor for Ranal.

Nowadays, Ranal Inc. is known as a global player in its core business, the manufacturing engineering (ME) design space. Isn't this at odds with Mahajan's computer science educational background from Wayne State University? Apparently not, as she says, "I was always excited about mechanical engineering. I don't believe that some sectors are suited or not suited to women entrepreneurs. It is just passion that drives a business." So Ranal developed a portfolio of technology services to fill the gap between design and production, that is, process engineering which includes process planning, manufacturing engineering design and documentation for production.

Spreading Ranal's wings

While Ranal now counts leading OEMs and their Tier-1 suppliers working in the automotive and aerospace engineering domains as its customers, its clientele wasn't always so widespread. From serving a customer base limited to the United States, today it offers services to US, Germany, France, Italy, China and many other countries. This is thanks to Mahajan's successful transformation of the ME design space, which was earlier dominated by international players from US, Europe and Japan because of the lack of exposure to robotics in countries like India and China. She has put together a team that is well-equipped to meet any sophisticated automatic or semi-automatic manufacturing line design requirement from any part of the world.

Convert challenges into key factors for success

Mahajan cites "the availability of enough resources as the biggest challenge, as the gap between demand and supply is quite huge. Unlike traditional ESPs (Engineering Service Providers) that concentrate on product designs, Ranal offers end-to-end ME design services. So hiring and training the right people is also a big challenge, yet a huge factor for success." Good people and effective business and customer engagement models, internal tools and processes define the future of an organization, to the extent that Mahajan believes "this combination causes great things to happen automatically." Fortunately though, these are what Mahajan lists as Ranal's USP.

If that is the case, Ranal's future will probably mirror its past successes. It has been growing at an average of about 45% annually in terms of manpower. In Mahajan's words, "From 30 people in the year 2000, we have now grown to be a 150 people company." But not all its results are so obvious. Mahajan estimates that "over 5% of the cars manufactured worldwide during the last 3 years have some of our effort in it." This intangible, nonetheless immensely significant contribution to the global automotive engineering sector is a veritable feather in Mahajan's cap.

A multi-faceted personality

Although she oversees the company's growth plan and strategic positioning in the industry, Mahajan describes herself as "more than a business person. I am also a mother of two career minded teenagers and; a philanthropist who wants to give back to the community." Given back she has, and in novel ways too. She shares, "My empathy for people battling leukemia committed me to run the Detroit Free Press Marathon and raise funds for the cause. My interests and zest for life embarked me on a unique aerobics video project that brought song and dance to a fitness regimen, which can be viewed on www.ranal.net"

Having other interests, Mahajan says, helps bring "perspective, balance and freshness to the management team at Ranal and its group companies."

But success doesn't come easy. Mahajan never lets up concentrating on building the synergy and great team Ranal boasts of. As she says, "Being a woman always makes the going tough.  Women don't like to lose in business and don't want to give up being a woman and mom. Trying to do both perfectly does make a woman work a lot harder and smarter." Nevertheless, the one silver lining she counts on is women's innate ability to multi-task. Having read about her, we'd say that that comes through loud and clear.

Charu Bahri is a freelance writer and author of two books. She also writes funding grants and software for a charity working in the health sector. 

Issue BG78 Sept07 

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