RED HOT CHAMP

Having grown RHI Magnesita India's share to 30 per cent in the country's refractory market, its leader Parmod Sagar is now focussed on building synergies with the acquired firms

- Sohini Mitter

PARMOD SAGAR, MD & CEO of RHI Magnesita India, has had a busy quarter. We catch him shortly after the completion of RHIM’s two acquisitions and just a day after it reported its December quarter results. Sagar, 55, has been at the helm of affairs at the Gurugram-based manufacturer and supplier of refractory products—used in steel, cement, non-ferrous metals, and glass industries— since 2013. Now, it wants to expand further.

RHIM India—born out of the integration of three Indian subsidiaries, RHI Clasil, RHI India, and Orient Refractories, of Austria-based RHI Magnesita Group—had announced the acquisition of Dalmia-OCL and Hi-Tech Chemicals in the December quarter, for which it shelled out ₹1,708 crore and ₹621 crore, respectively. “These acquisitions will help us serve our customers globally, as well as make India a hub to serve other regions,” says Sagar, adding that the challenge now will be to integrate the three companies, build a one-team culture and drive synergies in the nine manufacturing plants, from three earlier. “But, we are excited,” he says.

The two acquisitions have tripled RHIM India’s capacity to 500,000 tonnes, and upped its share in the domestic refractory market to 30 per cent. Dalmia-OCL, particularly, allows the company to make strong inroads into the non-steel industrial segment. “Earlier, our ratio was 80 per cent steel and 20 per cent industrial (cement, glass, non-ferrous). Now, it is 72 per cent steel and 28 per cent industrial. This gives us a lot of leverage,” says Sagar, who is the winner in the Industrials category of the BT-PwC India’s Best CEOs ranking this year.