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48 | PRATAP BHOGILAL - JOURNEY THROUGH LIFE
agreed to our terms, which would involve sizeable retrenchment, we would not be able to restart the office.
Ultimately, after about three weeks, they came around and sought an appointment with us in Mumbai. We agreed on condition that we would meet just two members of our staff who were union members and who had the mandate to decide on the terms. They agreed, and two of their representatives came over to Mumbai and we agreed on the terms of revision of pay scales, allowances and retrenchment, to reduce the number of staff from over 100 to 44. We also gave them a list of the staff members we were agreeable to re-employ. We had already sent by registered A/D details of the dues each of the employees was legitimately entitled to till the day of the closure of the Kolkata office, along with cheques. BatliboiKolkata reopened with 44 employees on its rolls as fresh employees. People in Kolkata were amazed that we could shut down our office and then reopen it with a smaller staff. Interestingly, the cutting down on staff had no negative impact on our sales figures. Instead, there was a marked improvement in efficiency and turnover.
The Batliboi factory at Udhna....
The Batliboi factory at Udhna was an offshoot of our machine tool business with Czechoslovakian manufacturers. The Czech manufacturers and we felt that it made business sense for Batliboi to set up a factory locally to manufacture milling machines as well as radial drilling machines with the technical know-how of the Czech manufacturers. We had seen a couple of locations for setting up the factory, but finally decided on buying a large plot of land keeping in mind future expansion. We had deputed R.K. Parikh, the General Manager of Shree Ram Mills, to identify some land near Surat. Eventually, with the help of friends we were able to identify and purchase about 150 acres of land at Udhna, and commence the machine tool business from there. This was sometime in 1960. Later, I approached Rockwell Senior of Rockwell of USA in Pittsburgh and proposed a jointventure for the manufacture of their machines in India with their technical collaboration. Batliboi already had business connections with Rockwell of USA. We had been agents for their wood-working machines in India.
When the king is unrighteous, who will not be unrighteous? - Somadeva
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