Working in a region of India known for earthquakes, landslides and floods might feel like a continuous battle for a specialist cement company like Max Cement, but if there’s one thing Managing Director Vineet Agarwal has learned, it’s to work with the conditions rather than against them.
As a result, Max Cement has built its identity and culture around the same strength and reliability that define its product, contributing to the development of infrastructure in North-East India.
“The terrain and the climate here are very difficult to navigate. In one week, it can rain more than it would rain in a year somewhere like Delhi. Because our commitment to North-East India is so strong and our roots are here, we built a strong capability to navigate this,” Agarwal tells The CEO Magazine.
“My father spotted the opportunity, seeing that if India is to grow, the North-East has to really catch up.”
“People coming into the North-East may not realize, but this is what becomes either a success or a failure point for many companies. We believe we’ve navigated this very well, and that’s our core competence now.
“We build for the North-East, from the North-East. We understand that different climates will need different formulations. Even our products are suited for the high moisture and high seismic zones in the North-East.”
From trouble to change
Once considered a troubled frontier region, development in the North-East is now booming, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi introducing a special Development Initiative to connect its state capitals by rail, enabling commerce and reducing migration.
Max Cement has been right at the center of this activity, in particular in what Agarwal describes as nation-critical infrastructure, such as strategic railway border connectivity projects in the states of Manipur, Mizoram and Tripura. As a result, the cement industry has actually grown threefold in the region since Agarwal started Max Cement 18 years ago.
“A lot of credit goes to our honorable Prime Minister for this, because he’s personally invested a lot of time and effort to make sure the projects in the North-East are executed on time and with top-quality, world-class parameters and metrics,” he says.
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“He has personally put a lot of emphasis on this, and we are happy that we played a very significant part in meeting the requirements of many of these critical infrastructure projects. We played not just our role as a supplier of cement to these projects, but as a well-anchored partner to them.
“And now is the time to look ahead toward more massive projects, as more industrialization is happening in the North-East. For example, the state of Assam has recently announced a semiconductor plant, which Tata is putting up there, and that is just the beginning of the next phase of industrialization for the North-East.”
The power of partnership
While cement may be seen as a commodity, Agarwal believes the company’s strength doesn’t lie in the product itself, but in the relationships it builds – grounded in commitment and reliability. For a capital- and equipment-intensive business like Max Cement, success depends not just on production, but also on strong, enduring partnerships like the one it has cultivated with the Suchita Group.
“It requires a lot of partners and a collaborative approach, be it your logistics supplier, your raw material supplier, your equipment supplier or your maintenance pair supplier,” Agarwal explains.
“Our suppliers have been the same for the last 15 years. We have a relationship where if we have a breakdown, I can call them at midnight and they’ll ensure that a solution is delivered by the morning,”
“We build for the North-East, from the North-East.”
And it goes both ways. Agarwal gives the example of a last-minute delivery Max Cement almost literally moved mountains to fulfill.
“A partner of ours was doing a critical project in Mizoram, and they couldn’t get access to raw material because there was a landslide. The whole road was swept away. They called at almost midnight saying if they couldn’t get a certain quantity of cement, the whole progress of the project would stall and lead to massive losses,” Agarwal recalls.
“We managed to divert some supplies toward their end and by 8am the next morning, they had the cement in place and they could do their casting.”
Experiencing personal challenges and growth
Agarwal’s personal journey at Max Cement has been as big as his professional one, stepping into the role of Managing Director in 2007 after the untimely passing of his father.
“This is actually a family business. I helped start it with my father – it was my father’s dream. But as fate would have it, he didn’t live long enough to see his dream nurture. He passed away two months after our first plant was commissioned,” Agarwal reflects.
“My father spotted the opportunity, seeing that if India is to grow, the North-East has to really catch up on all the infrastructure that was, until then, lagging behind.
“I had to deal with the personal loss as well as handle a very large project with a lot of responsibility. Unfortunately, at that particular time, the cement industry was going through a glut of oversupply. We had to do a deep operational restructuring. Over the next three-to-four years, I personally spent a lot of time building our partner relationships. Then we were on our way to growth again.”
“We soon hope to be able to use 100 percent renewable energy for all our energy needs.”
As a result, according to Agarwal, Max Cement has become more agile since he started 18 years ago. The company is small enough to care, he argues, but strong enough to last.
Looking at the bigger picture, Agarwal also has one eye on sustainability and another on how AI can enhance operations, as the company plans to open its second plant, a one million-metric-ton operation in Assam to complement its original plant in Meghalaya. A third 1.5 million-metric-ton plant is also on the cards for Meghalaya.
“AI is coming in a big way. This, I hope, will reshape some of the way we do things in cement and lead to better productivity and a reduction in costs, using things like predictive maintenance tools,” he says.
“This can be done along with qualified engineers. We also run a helpline for all our masons, which can now be made more automated. But I don’t think we’ve come to a point where things can be done only by AI.”
Agarwal is determined to bolster the company’s sustainability credentials, and has high hopes for the future.
“We are focusing on sourcing more than 60 percent of our energy needs through renewable sources,” he says. “In Assam, we’re putting up a captive solar plant of 15 megawatts for securing our energy needs through renewable means.
“We soon hope to be able to use 100 percent renewable energy for all our energy needs.”
