Atul Khanna is a well-known
entrepreneur in the Indian engineering industry. He
has pioneered new concepts and integrated them as business
models in knowledge management and international collaborative
process development. The segments of his participation
have been Engineering Services, Finnish Academia, Systems
Biology, and Manufacturing.
His first Company, then an Indo-German joint venture
in hard-metal tooling, was Drillco Hertel Limited. From
a startup, it rapidly grew into India's third largest
company in its sector. The business was subsequently
integrated under him and later sold on a successful
basis to a Swedish Company (Seco). The company was a
high technology, high gestation, capital intensive project.
It combined European engineering with Indian costs in
a manufactured product. This framework provided the
base for Mr. Khanna's vision for future development,
in international collaborative processes.
Since then, Mr. Khanna has changed track and diversified
into entrepreneurship in scientific research collaboration
and IT enabled engineering services.
He is Chairman of Systems
Biology World Wide Oy; a joint venture between the
University of Helsinki and Tooltech. Europe has been
the focus in engineering services.
This initiative has several path breaking agreements.
These agreements have opened up collaborative research
in scientific projects with India as a dominant theme
and herald a new form of cooperation rather than just
training. The focus is on multi-disciplinary science
curricula. An 'Umbrella Agreement' has been additionally
signed as a public-private bilateral partnership with
the Academy
of Finland; this supports the ideal of research
project cooperation, between Finland and India, with
a catalyst role played by Tooltech. As a result co-operation
agreements with Indian Government Institutions (Department
of Science & Technology, Department of Bio Technology,
Council of Scientific & Industrial Research) were
so facilitated.
Tooltech's engineering services is its best known commercial
endeavour. Tooltech brings methodology and experience
on multi location, intensive collaboration of concurrent
product development, to replicate client's own engineering
office. Tooltech has made a mark in Germany; which is
one of the most conservative and demanding engineering
markets in the world. This was expanded to Scandinavia,
Finland and France; where local subsidiaries perform
the seamless outsourcing role. |
