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Wellwin bucks trend riding on two-wheelers

M. Ramesh

CHENNAI, May 16

WELLWIN Industry Ltd, an infant in the auto components sector, has managed to buck the trend and post higher profit for the six-month period ended March 31, 2001. It managed this because it supplies starter motors to two-wheelers, an industry yet to be touched by recession.

Wellwin is into three businesses -- auto components, distribution of computer peripherals and instrumentation. In the quarter ended March 31, 2001, the company achieved a turnover of Rs 24.11 crore, as against Rs 13.83 crore in the corresponding quarter of last year. Its net profit for the period was Rs 2.47 crore as against Rs 2.04 crore previously.

The company produces starter motors for the two-wheeler industry, with technology from Poong Sung Electric of Korea. Since inception in 1998, the auto components division has so far supplied 2,10,000 starter motors to various two-wheelers.

Two-wheeler manufacturers such as Kinetic Engineering, Kinetic Honda and LML take about 12,000-15,000 starter motors from Wellwin, which is also negotiating with other two-wheeler majors.

The company has just set up a facility to produce magnetos, which it considers a pre-step to getting into ``all-permanent magnet motor products'' such as fan motors and wiper motors.

The Managing Director of Wellwin, Mr R. Rajagopalan, told Business Line on Wednesday that the auto electricals business would fetch in sales of Rs 18 crore this year (ending September), as against Rs 12 crore last year.

Mr Rajagopalan said that the computer peripherals business was also growing. The division is expected to clock in sales of Rs 60 crore this year, as against Rs 32 crore in the year ended September 2000. A few days back, the company signed up with Compex of Singapore, a networking company, for distributing networking products.

Alcast to introduce 2-wheeler batteries

Alcast, an associate company of Wellwin Industry, took over last year a sick battery manufacturing unit in Chennai, called MFB, and turned it around.

Mr Rajagopalan said that Alcast was now close to introducing automotive and industrial batteries in the market.

``We are in the process of appointing dealers and distributors,'' Mr Rajagopalan, who is also one of the promoters of Alcast, said.

A 12-volt battery for two-wheelers (in two variants, 2.5 AH and 5 AH) is to be introduced under the Alcast brand name. Another 12-volt battery, also in 32 AH and 36 AH variants, is to be brought in, for 800 cc cars. Alcast also has plans for a range of b atteries for industrial (UPS) applications.

Apart from this, Alcast also manufactures a range of products, which are supplied to auto component manufacturers such as Lucas TVS, IFB Autoliv, Imaco and JKM Daelim.

Alcast was taken by the promoters of Wellwin Industry last year. ``After taking over, we invested Rs 8.5 crore in creating cold extrusion, special die-casting, precision machining and heat treatment facilities,'' Mr Rajagopalan said.