Keyur Shah

Managing Director

The Indian pharma industry’s allied companies are to ensure that it continues on the growth trajectory of the past couple of years. These contractors must help the pharma manufacturers be at the top of their game while handling the technicalities and adhering to international standards.

It is here that companies like Skai Air Control have an edge over their competitors. For over 15 years, the company has served the HVAC&R requirements in the petrochemical, office, hospital, and pharmaceutical industries. In addition, Skai designs, builds, delivers, and supports modular clean rooms for all pharmaceutical applications. Innovation is at the core of its single-source offerings, from idea to implementation.

Since its inception, the timely delivery of quality products has been a focal point of the company, which has helped it achieve the trust of its clients. A key highlight here is that not all the materials for the turnkey solutions are procured from third parties. The factories are well-equipped for end-to-end delivery of the products instead of creating dependency on any. In its endeavor to deliver the best turnkey solutions, the company has obtained ISO certification and sustained it for over ten years.

Pharma Industry Outlook got in touch with Keyur Shah, Managing Director of Skai Air Control, to gain an insight into the state of pharma contracting and how Skai’s journey has been so far. Here is an excerpt from the interview.

What’s your take on the pharma turnkey contracting market, and what trends are you observing?

Globally, it is accepted that pharma manufacturing is growing in India and is progressing towards becoming a hub of vaccine manufacturing, APIs, and more. To make this a reality, companies like ourselves are providing state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities that are at par with international standards.

The pharma organizations need to get the approval of regulatory authorities like the FDA for their drugs or get a GMP certification for their manufacturing units. To meet these requirements, a turnkey contractor has to have years of experience and in-depth knowledge of facilitating and helping pharma organizations as fast as possible while maintaining the quality of the delivery at the best possible price.

You started with HVAC and were focused on industrial projects. How were you able to translate your solutions to the pharma industry?

We have started backward integration of panels and ducting to facilitate pharma projects. We can extend our HVAC solutions to the pharma industry. Also, we are adept at building cleanroom partition panels for them. Since we don’t depend much on anybody else for material, we can complete the project within the client’s timeframe. We give our clients almost one month of technical training and teach them how to maintain the infrastructure. In terms of human resources, two hundred and fifty people are working for us in nearly 50,000 square feet of manufacturing factory. The people working with us have grown as commercial experts and are now on the board of Skai. Our team has a total knowledge experience of almost 10 to 15 years.

How do you ensure the quality aspect of your turnkey solutions?

Skai has been an ISO-certified company for more than ten years. We ensure that due process is followed and that every supplier involved at any stage of manufacturing and delivery produces the required test certificates. Our quality inspection team makes sure that the products are of top quality. Our people do the installation at the client site. If there is any problem with the material, we immediately get it rectified. Each solution has a specific warranty period, and the annual maintenance contract remains with us. We take utmost care that whatever the material has been supplied and the installation is done, it is up to 100 percent satisfaction to the client and ourselves.

We have 50,000 square feet of the factory manufacturing facility in Vadodara and a satellite office in Ahmedabad and Vapi for the service part. We have tie-ups with companies like Voltas and Mitsubishi for a specific range of products, and we regularly send our technical team to their training institute and their Factories. Our people are getting trained and updated on whatever technology enhancement is done, which we pass on to our customers.

How has the journey been so far, and what lies ahead for Skai Air Control?

Initially, in 2005, we were only dealing in Vadodara. Then we started getting jobs from different parts of Gujarat. Later, we moved down to the South. Day by day, we experienced that our reach has increased. And since the reach has increased, the number of people has also increased. And this meant that our business also grew. Last year, we made something around 70-72 crores, and this year we’ll be closing almost 100 crores, growing around 30-40 percent.

As for the company’s future goal, we plan to take up international projects and go global. We already have a few jobs in Dubai, Nigeria, and Mexico. We will also be expanding our manufacturing base by opening a couple of factories, maybe one in Gujarat near Mumbai, and another in some part of South India probably near Chennai. From there, we can reach our customers who are already there, we can enhance our manufacturing facility, which will be of high-quality standards, and thus we can do many more jobs worldwide.