This year, Unimech Aerospace Manufacturing Pvt Ltd celebrated its 6th anniversary with blood donation drives, tree planting initiatives, a food feast fundraiser, and various enjoyable activities for employees and the community.

In August 2016, we had three employees in a small 1,500 sq ft office in Bangalore. Now we have grown, going global & have 200 employees, two manufacturing facilities, and 60,000 sq. ft. of manufacturing space worldwide.

A land footprint of 2 acres will enable the expansion of a further 125,000 sq. ft. in addition to our UK and US sales offices. We are a trusted manufacturing partner to OEMs and tier one suppliers in the aerospace, defense, energy, and nuclear power industries.

Unimech has invested over $ 5 million in its manufacturing facilities, machinery, and digital systems since its formation in 2016, including a new facility built on 2 acres of land in the Aerospace SEZ, Bangalore. Our engineering capabilities and investments make us a trusted partner to global OEMs for complex and critical tooling, electromechanical assemblies, and precision components. The company exports more than 80% of its products to the global aviation and power generation industries and supports the Indian defense and nuclear power industries.

We are a trusted supplier to OEMs and tier one suppliers worldwide. We count Boeing, Collins Aerospace, and the Nuclear Power Corporation of India (NPCIL) among our customers.

As Unimech Aerospace expands in response to its growing order book, our employee strength has crossed 200. We are reaching this milestone on our six-year anniversary.
The core of our organization is our talented employees, according to our CEO Anil Puthan. Along with expanding our team, we continue to invest in training, skill development, and learning to support our growing order book. As of the end of this financial year, we anticipate that we will have over 250 employees working in the company.
Unimech is an AS9100 Rev D and ISO45001 certified business. We are a highly specialized company that manufactures and supplies complex tooling, electromechanical assemblies, structural fabrications, and precision components for aerospace, defense, and power generation companies, including a number of global OEMs.

Our team from Unimech participated in the 7th edition of the Aerospace and Defense Manufacturing Show on 28-29 July 2022, where we met the best minds working in the field and learned about many different aspects of the aerospace and defense manufacturing industry.

A silver sponsor, Unimech, was represented by our CEO, Anil Puthan, as a keynote speaker. There were a number of Indian Forces visitors at our stand. One of the topics we discussed with them was the possibility of indigenizing manufacturing for complex components.

Self-reliance and indigenization in the defense sector have always been India’s top priority, and achieving these goals is a necessity, not only for strategic reasons but also from an economic perspective, since reducing defense imports is a decisive step towards achieving self-sufficiency.

Through the Atmanirbhar Bharat mission, the government is eager to advance indigenization, which offers Indian and foreign defense companies many lucrative opportunities.

Since its inception in 2014, the Aeromag Asia Aerospace and Defense Manufacturing Show (ADMS), which is a unique exhibition of defense manufacturers organized by Aeromag Asia in partnership with SIATI, has always shared the government’s vision of making India a hub for defense manufacturing. The event was supported by ISRO, DRDO, and Defense Public sector companies, including Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), BEML, and the Indian Armed Forces.

The aviation industry flocked to the UK for the 2022 Farnborough International Airshow in order to discover and experience the newest innovations in aerospace.

This year, the Farnborough International Airshow served as the first major event post pandemic, paving a way to reconnect with colleagues from around the world, enabling business growth and recovery.

Our CEO, Anil Puthan, and Chairman, Marc Drew, attended the event and were based at the Farnborough Aerospace Consortium stand. It was an opportunity to meet customers in person for the first time in three years and to showcase our new facility at the Bangalore Aerospace SEZ. During the show our team had the opportunity to meet with several global OEMs and tier one suppliers in the aerospace and defense industries.

Jan 2020 – Unimech’s 3rd facility at the Aerospace SEZ Bangalore is really taking hape as the construction continues according to plan. Phase I of unit 3 will be 25,000 sq. ft and will support increasing our fabrication capacity and capability. The facility is planned to be operational at the end of Q1.

NEW EUROPEAN SALES OFFICE
Nov 2020 – In addition to our 3 facilities in Bangalore, Unimech Aerospace is pleased to announce the opening of our new European sales office in Germany to both support our continued business growth and improve proximity to our European customers..

The skies have always been clear for the India aviation industry. Surprisingly, on the field, the aerospace industry has vouched for the major changes fuelled by growing demand for air travel and a return to growth in the Defense sector. Incited by this, a new agile business, OEMs emerged where numerous companies are ramping up their operations to deliver better value and more innovative and advanced solutions to their clientele.  Yet some bottlenecks underlies with the absence of dedicated companies who could work on these niche areas of manufacturing at a competitive cost, because of their high Engineering and Labor rates. To channel individual strengths, experiences and expertise of people to create something bigger and more impactful in the aviation MRO Industry, UniMech Aerospace came into existence in 2014.  UniMech Aerospace And Manufacturing Pvt. Ltd. is an ‘AS9100 Rev C’ certified Company holding expertise in manufacturing and engineering of Structural Fabrication, Mechanical Tooling Assemblies for GSE and MRO Companies in Aerospace sector. The organization is a strategic supplier and sub-contract manufacturer for various Global MRO Tooling companies in Europe, US and Middle East.

UniMech’s 3-year journey holds a colossal in getting established as an Aerospace MRO & GSE tooling powerhouse in India. It was a delight to have a conversation with Mr. Anil Kumar Puthan who discussed over a host of issues in line with UniMech’s advent, its journey so far and the plans ahead.

“We don’t want to be resting on our laurels of being the ‘Most Preferred’ suppliers to our customers, but would want to surge ahead by increasing capacity and provide increased value to our customers.” Anil Kumar Puthan in conversation with The CEO Magazine 

Indian MRO & OEM’s spectrum is still juggling among the hurdles. You could have entered a smooth emerging line of business…they why did you go off the beat?

Our customers were finding it difficult to scale the manufacturing of products due to its high complexity, Raw Material availability, Special Process Suppliers availability and many other reasons. We at UniMech have a unique advantage on these factors as we have very good suppliers for most of the Raw materials and Special Processes. We have a very seasoned engineering & quality team, which can take up highly complex projects and we have delivered over 400+ complex projects.

Another major hurdle for Indian airlines is getting their planes repaired at Indian facility as they have to be sent to Dubai or Singapore or Europe for complete maintenance activities. The flight traffic in India has been growing rapidly and the number of airlines and airplanes have been increasing to address this growth. With the increase in a number of planes operated by the airlines, we look forward to supporting Indian airlines to operate efficiently cutting down a lot of Logistic cost to our Customers as well as Airlines / MRO’s.

As an Indian company, we support “Make in India” initiative by having the ability to deliver some of the very complex MRO and GSE tooling. We also provide Offset to any of the defense and aerospace companies which can hugely benefit them.

Take us on the tour of the products and services being offered under the hat of UniMech?

We manufacture and assemble the tooling and handling equipment for Maintenance Repair and Overhaul of Aero engines structural parts and also manufacture ground supporting equipments for airplane and engines. These tools will enable the maintenance engineers to hold, clamp, Assemble, Disassemble, Inspect and perform the repair activity in the Aero engines / Aircraft Parts at ease. We provide end to end solution wherein our customers provide the drawings and we manufacture and assemble as per the requirement and also do the performance test before dispatching. In addition to MRO and GSE tooling, we are into manufacturing custom components for industries like Aerospace, Oil and Gas, Healthcare Machinery, and General Engineering Industries.

What sets UniMech apart?

Core strength of UniMech is Engineering & Quality manufacturing techniques. We have got a solid team who could crack any of the drawing provided by the customer and define the processes to manufacture any given Mechanical Assembly. Our understanding of drawings is among the best manufacturing companies in the world. Other factors which give an edge to our business is the complete Tool Room setup with welding and assembly facility. We perform the entire test as per the drawing and compliant with various International Standards. We furnish the attested quality documents with all our deliverables. Our customers are very happy. Here’s one our customer’s testimonial: “UniMech is among our best strategic suppliers in the world and can be compared to the best engineering and manufacturing companies in US & Europe.”

What’s about the competition?

In India, currently, there are not too many companies whose core focus is towards MRO activities. We have an edge over all other competitors as our main focus is towards MRO / GSE at this moment and we are striving towards becoming the number 1 supplier in India for all major Airlines. We can achieve this in another 2 years’ timeframe through our strategic partnership with our customers and also the Suppliers.

The next plan…

As part of that, we are looking at recruiting more high-quality engineering and manufacturing employees and increase the number of strategic suppliers. We would want to add better manufacturing management techniques by deploying better technologies. We plan to increase the square footage of our shop floor to support increased capacity. We are working on getting “AS 9100 Rev ‘D” certified soon and also add special process and be NADCAP approved. In terms of leadership, we have some very seasoned leaders with a wide range of experience and our board advisor is an aerospace industry thought leader from UK who is highly accomplished.

We want to stay nimble and keep looking at making our customers, suppliers and our employees successful. In addition to being the number 1 aerospace MRO and GSE tooling company in India, we would want to scale our aerospace components business as well to leverage our high-quality engineering and manufacturing capabilities.

Milestones

• Aug 2014 – Launch of UniMech Consulting – Engineering Services
• Sep 2014 – Delivery of Engineering Services to UK and US Clients
• Apr 2016 – Launch of Manufacturing & Assembly Setup in Peenya, Bangalore
• May 2016 – Direct Export of Aero Engine and Structural Tooling Assemblies and Precision parts to the Middle East and European Clients
• Oct 2016 – Pulled in Strategic Investors to form UniMech Aerospace & Manufacturing Pvt Ltd
• Jan 2017 – ISO 9001-2008TUV – Austria – Certified
• June 2017 – AS9100 Rev C – TUV Certified
• ‘Go To Supplier’ within 8 Months of inception

The hand steering UniMech

Anil Kumar Puthan

Anil manages the end-to-end aspects of design, manufacturing and execution of large scale projects at UniMech. Beginning his career as an engineer, he went on to undertake multiple, complex roles in various organizations including handling 50 engineers as Project Manager in QuEST Global. Anil has a keen eye for details and is the first to get to the heart of a problem. No matter how complex the problem is or what specific tool or machine is required, he works together with his engineers to put together the concept, set up systems, work on complex engineering design and optimize project and performance management efficiently. Anil loves taking on challenges and is always figuring out solutions to various engineering problems.

As a bright manufacturing engineer, you will find many opportunities in companies to help build your career, however if you want to go beyond your career and master your craft, leadership and entrepreneurial rigor, then you must certainly consider UniMech as your destination.

Unimech is among the fastest growing Aerospace companies in India, CEO Magazine also seems to agree with us and has listed us among the 25 fastest growing companies in India. We have been growing at a breakneck speed of over 10X in terms of people strength, revenue, delighting our customers and business footprint.

While the growth is exciting for us, our culture and values are especially significant and that which keeps our employees growing and thriving.

Seven key values and behaviors underpin our work culture, has helped create sustained growth for our company, and create exciting careers for our employees;

VALUES

• Uncompromising honesty and integrity
• Safety first at all times for yourself and others around you
• Ensure the wellbeing of all UniMech employees and stakeholders

BEHAVIORS

• Listen, build mutual trust and respect for each other
• Adhere to high levels of accountability and follow through on commitments
• Ensure quality in whatever we do
• Drive unhindered innovation and continuous improvement
• Never stop learning and adopting best practices

These values and behaviors help us grow every day and contribute significantly towards the success of the company and self.

Unimech is backed by a professional leadership team entrenched in global aerospace engineering & manufacturing industry with a combined experience of over 100 years.

The Leadership Team has a proven track record with global players like Rolls Royce, HAL, Snecma, GE. UTC in leadership roles. The team excels at scaling people-oriented organizations, and have incorporated the same fervor by providing opportunities to employees early in their careers empowering them with leadership roles.

Throughout our growth and scale, our mission has been to make air-travel safer by delivering MRO/GSE tooling that is defect free, true to quality and always on time.

It is our vision that has driven us thus far,

• To be the most preferred tooling and component supplier in India for our global customers.
• To exemplify manufacturing excellence at all times.
• To make Unimech a great work place for all our employees.

We’ve constantly achieved our lofty mission and vision by world class engineering & master craftsmanship which is helping us build large precision tooling (2m to 5m with less than 5 micron tolerance). Our work speaks for itself even in the words of our competitors across different parts of the world who vouch for the orders we receive based on our high quality craftsmanship.

If constant challenges excite you, Unimech gives you copious amounts of challenges to help you master your craft and change the world one tooling at a time.

Our benefits are on a par with the best in the industry with social security, medical insurance, focus on wellness and performance based incentives. Beyond the extrinsic benefits, it’s the intrinsic ones that we’ve seen excite our employees more. The freedom to innovate, instigate initiatives, strong bent towards a growth mindset, shouldering responsibilities and accountability will help in the grooming of leadership skills and an entrepreneurial mindset.

What we’ve said about is just a glimpse into our work culture. There is infact plenty more to explore for you personally and professionally. Join Unimech to launch a career for yourself that you will love.

Further to the opening of our European sales office in Q4 2020 Unimech Aerospace is pleased to announce the appointment of Todd Chambers as our US based Sales & Marketing Advisor to support our continued business growth and improve proximity to our North American customers. Todd is an accomplished and well-rounded aerospace executive with 35+ years of success in aircraft operations, turbine engine manufacturing/maintenance and aftermarket service management for business jets. His career is marked by managing accounts with global premier business jet companies, Bombardier, Cessna, Embraer and Gulfstream as well as several US-based carriers.