Shardul Kshirsagar
Global CEO & Managing Director
Fowler Westrup (India) Pvt. Ltd.
PGEMP Batch 1 | Year: 2002-2004
2002: Regional Manager, Thermax Ltd.
The chemical division business at Thermax was doing well in India with a small US presence, back then when I was heading the international business for the Chemical Division. The task of making the business profitable and sustaining it was challenging. We knew we had to enter Europe, East Asia, and Southeast Asia. My capstone project was a real-life project. It blended industry experience and the learnings from the classes. It was implemented as the chemical division of Thermax’s entry into the European market. It was also used to grow the market in SEA and East Asia.
Questions like “What is the potential available in the target countries? What should we focus on? Do we have a product for that market? How to start it?” were asked, and data was collected. I applied my learnings, introduced the concept of product mix, and posted one man in London to start our business in the UK and one in Indonesia for the SEA market. This strategy helped us quickly build a multi-million USD portfolio in SEA, East Asia, and Europe by deploying the right products to meet market requirements. This also included selecting countries and developing partners. I presented this internally to our stakeholders and the senior management as part of the closure capstone project for my EMBA programme. We moved from 0 to USD 4 Mn in 3 years.
Twenty years later that product mix is still one of the best-performing products and revenue contributors to Thermax’s global business.
These are excerpts from his interview featured in the PGEMP Impact Book (January 2025)