The Most Important Thing Is What The Customer Needs

Presenting Japanese technology at Indian cost is the main aim of the joint venture between Tokyo-based Freund Corporation and Mumbai-based Parle Global Technologies. Iwao Fusejima, President & CEO, Freund Corporation and Mahendra Mehta, Managing Director, Parle Global Technologies spoke to Viveka Roychowdhury on the sidelines of the launch of the first product from this JV

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Congratulations on the joint venture (JV) between Parle Global and Freund which was announced in December. When and how did the talks for this JV start? Iwao Fusejima: It took us five years. We met in 2013 when Parle Global found us in Europe at ACHEMA exhibition. After I talked to him, I felt we shared the same values with the Mehta family.

My father started Freund Corporation in 1964. Similarly, Parle Global Technologies was set up by Mahendra Mehta's father, Rajmal Mehta and when I met his father, he was like my father. Both have had the same entrepreneurial drive and at about the same age. Though he is Indian and I am Japanese, I really felt that we have the same values. I think having the same values from the get-go is the best starting point. It still took us five years to come to this point of announcing this JV.

What kind of a partner was Parle Global looking out for? Are there other JVs, partnerships?

Mahendra Mehta: We started our company in 1974, as a tablet tooling manufacturer, making dies and punches for tablet compression machines (tablet presses). We also were representing many companies from Korea, Japan, US, Germany; bringing their technologies to India as sales and services agents. When we saw Freund's product at ACHEMA in 2013, we found it to be a good technology. We felt Indian pharma customers were now ready to go up a level. They were managing with locally available technology, and then imported technology from Korea and Italy, but they were now looking for technologies from Germany and Japan as these were at another level. We found the Freund product very efficient. Although it is expensive, we knew that Indian pharma companies are now ready for the next level and would find it affordable because they believe in quality and were moving from semiregulated markets to more regulated markets.