Johnson lifts targets 2,200 crore revenues by 2020

The debt-free privately-held Rs 1,600-crore Johnson Lifts has expanded its footprint and brought the next-gen into the business. Now, the lift major aims to breach the Rs 2,200 crore turnover mark by 2020. In an exclusive interview with DTNext, the top management team shared the blueprint as Johnson Lifts gets ready for the next leap of growth. The founder KJ John and his son John K John during a trip to Vellore saw the birth of Johnson (John + son) in 1963,  which started as a maintenance company. 

“We have retained that unit in Vyasarpadi for sentimental reasons,” says Johnson Lifts ED V Jagannathan, who joined the company in 1998. Thereafter, to cater to the Chennai market alone, Johnson set up a unit in Ambattur Industrial estate (this is now used to manufacture components only). Johnson Lifts expanded to Hyderabad too. 

Import restrictions, the lack of technology and foreign collaboration made the company restrict its operations to south of India. But post-liberalisation, Johnson Lifts established its state-of-the-art manufacturing unit at Poonamallee in 1996, where the 155 ft test tower became the tallest structure then. 

“At this juncture we felt the need to go beyond south,” recalls Jagannathan. The economic boom gave it enough ammunition to explore beyond south. “We are a pan-India company, having presence in 45 locations that are serviced by our three manufacturing units in the country,” says Yohan K John, Director, who joined the business five years ago. Johnson Lifts bifurcated the operations and established another unit in Nagpur. 

“We chose to be in central part of India to be closer to our customers. North and west were proving to be good business regions and that is why we started our operations there in 2003,” the ED says, adding the south and east markets were serviced by the plant in Chennai. 

Since then, in a span of about eight years, the company managed to execute majority of its installations which is now 75,000-plus. The mall concept had picked up triggering business potential for Johnson Lifts that now saw the scope for foraying into the escalator segment. 

“We tied up with a Chinese company in 2004 for technology partnership and our formula then was to buy and install. In 2008, we opted for technology transfer and bought land at Orgadam to set up an exclusive elevator manufacturing unit in 2009. By then, the market had matured and we became the only domestic company to make escalators in India,” notes Jagannathan. Johnson Lifts has so far installed 500odd escalators in a market estimated to be 55,000 units. 

“We have 38 pc market share in this segment,” chips in Yohan, who takes pride in stating that 40 escalators (the largest in the city at a single location) were installed inside Saravana Stores’s new facility at Padi. It also customised for Pothy’s three years ago. 

Johnson Lifts has a joint venture with Toshiba since 2012 after it bought a minority stake in the Japanese company to cater to its niche customers. With the government ramping up infrastructure and setting up Metro in places that have a population of over 25 lakh, Johnson Lifts Metro projects include installations at Chennai, Bengaluru,  Cochin, Jaipur, Gurgaon, Lucknow and Delhi. 

“We have done about 38 pc of the installations for Delhi Metro where others such as Schindler, Otis and Kone,” Jagannathan said. Having established its dominance in the elevator market, growing at 10 pc annually, Johnson Lifts has chalked out plans to expand its footprints overseas. Nepal, where it has a strong presence, Sri Lanka, where it plans to re-enter and East Africa are the locations that it is betting big.