OK Play set to become czar of design of plastic goods
26 Apr 2009, 0428 hrs IST,Debasish Roy,ET Bureau
If you have employed an army of highly skilled engineers and craftsmen who are past-masters at moulding and rotating plastic and at the same time
the whole world is turning everything into bacteria free and organic free plastic then what do you have? Bingo. Rajan Handa is at the right time and the right place.
"The government of Tamil Nadu had come to us recently and showed us a presentation about converting all the sewage lines from concrete to roto-moulding plastic. We told them that concrete sewage manholes take 21 days to install holding up people and traffic while we can install 21 such manholes in one working day."
Going by United Nations and World Trade Organisation safety regulations , the world (including Handa's customers) have to convert to plastic. For instance, Ashok Leyland's manufacturing head honchos are calling him every day and increasing their erstwhile order by substantial multiples .
Handa reiterates what he had told FINANCIAL TIMES ad nauseam. "There is no recession in India. Recession? What a joke. This country has not even tapped one per cent of its business potential. All that is required is the right kind of hard work and planning for the business model and analyzing the needs of your customer," says he.
OK Play the company, has tied up with an Israeli partner and is in the process of creating better and bigger technologies for its customers . It is slowly moving away from being a plasticsmade-to-order engineering and consulting company and is graduating into a company manufacturing products and a range of them. But what is taking up the company's time is the Economic Times - OK Play, co-branded design contest from all and sundry.
The panel of experts judging the designs would be from all over the country and from renowned institutions such as National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad and also other well known design organization imparting knowledge in this area.
OK Play has come a long way. It began with an attempt to create innovatively designed overhead water tanks for houses. Handa soon found that he was competing against people who operated with third grade plastic and also ran their manufacturing operations with stolen electricity .
However, what is interesting is what Handa chose to do after that debacle. He shifted quickly to toys and acquired a company in the United Kingdom called OK Play and used his own expertise of rotation moulding plastic to create better and more appropriate things for the corporate customer.
These products ranged from street signs and other point of purchase marketing collateral to fuel tanks that snaked their shapes into whatever space was available inside the tractor's or truck's innards.
After peaking in the matter of manufacturing to the customer's needs, OK Play is all set to become the czar of design of plastic goods. A plastic Nano? A plastic yatch? A plastic stadium? Why not?
To highlight the brand and the design contest all over the country, the company has embarked on a simple but effective advertising campaign in most widely read supplements. And it's working already.
Design afficianados are behaving as if there is no tomorrow and are seizing one of the few opportunities that they get in this country to celebrate design.
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