Shruti Gat: Endeavouring to Overhaul the Steel Construction Industry

Leaders

Shruti Gat: Endeavouring to Overhaul the Steel Construction Industry

Shruti Gat: Endeavouring to Overhaul the Steel Construction Industry

Shruti Gat
Founder & CEO

Industrial evolution has come a long way now, steel is pushing the construction industry towards a safer and more sustainable future. In many countries, if not all, the world of construction and engineering is typically perceived to be male-dominated. However, there’s still always room for positive changes. Over time, countless game-changing women have managed to break the glass ceiling and built their way from the ground up, either rising to the top of their respective companies or building their own venturing as entrepreneurs.

As an exemplary leader for the steel construction industry in the broadest sense, a 27-year-old Shruti Gat has excelled in research, development, and industry infrastructure development over a sustained period. A mechanical engineering graduate, Shruti, from an early age, had a tend towards heavy machinery and its mechanism. She followed her instinct right from the early days. She had quite an extensive and inspiring journey of learning, and trying out different jobs & businesses, before incepting Reclasteel by recognizing the lacuna in the steel construction sector. She always dreamt high and stayed focused towards it. Her resilience to achieve something is unmatchable. This tenacity is now helped her grow her company worth around a whopping Rs.100 crore valuation today.

The devout professional, Shruti has exceptionally proved her staunch leadership quality by being committed to organizing and overhauling the unorganized steel construction sector through her company today.

Recently Shruti engaged in an exclusive interaction with the women entrepreneur magazine. Let’s read on!

Take us through your educational background and prior industry experience.

I am a hardcore mechanical engineer. Basically, it was right during my school years that I decided to enter the engineering field and do business. The excitement and knowledge about things that can make you earn more money got me to multiple places which had heavy machinery and plants. Once, I had a chance to visit a sugar mill in the Kolhapur district (my native) with my father. Finding the gigantic machines there, working effortlessly to produce sugar seemed really interesting to me. While that incident intrigued me a lot to know more about engineering and heavy machinery stuff, I generated good interest in steel and machines and the way the mechanical world runs. I studied in the sixth standard then. Likewise, many other industrial visits and insightful discussions with my father intrigued me to peruse the beautiful world of business. I soon realized where I want to be and where I actually belonged. Hence, it was the orientation or incidents in my early years that created within me the likelihood for machinery and business.

My both parents are doctors running a multispecialty hospital. I really liked the managerial skills they held, handling the business, staff, and especially growth. I learned a lot from them and combining my interest and the field where I wanted to be, I decided to start something that excites me and had a touch of growth & scalability. It was relentless efforts and extreme dedication that helped me catch the growth in the robust world of steel. It was my parents because of whom, this journey was possible. They raised us with the highest possible values and ethics and today this has become the foundation of Reclasteel.

Define Reclasteel. What was the underlying idea that you wanted to bring to life through your company?

Reclasteel (2020), is a steel construction company, that strives to transform the way construction projects are getting executed in the steel industry, backed by an experienced team of tech entrepreneurs having successful track records in understanding customer requirements.

Well, my entrepreneurial and business stint dates back to my school time when I tried out making and selling jewelry with my friends and then followed by a fashion designing studio. Even in those days, I used to make little money by trying out various options and that actually helped me understand customer psychology at a minute level in early age. After completion of my engineering, and working with Fiat India automobiles, I was also involved in the land dealing business with a group of college friends and our first deal was with Mahindra & Mahindra. We knew that this all is temporary, and what I wanted was something scalable and sort of a value addition to the market. Coincidentally, I did my job in Fiat India in supply chain domain. I soon understood the tactics in supply chain of manufacturing sector and realized that this industry needs digital transformation and integrated platforms to streamline the processes. Steel was any way my interest. Once I came across someone in an exhibition who was working in the steel structure industry, and I got a chance to know more about what the market needs, what actually can make a great difference to today’s economy. The Steel construction industry was my instinct to follow for thousands of thoughts I came across.

India is the second-largest manufacturer and second-largest consumer of steel. Looking at it, we know there is always a room for big development and a huge market size, I incepted Reclasteel, with a bigger motive.

Though this is going to take time, we have now developed a remarkable footprint in the market. There were tough times too when we wanted to give up, but we stayed here with immense hardwork and patience. Having spent around five years researching and venturing and doing business we are soon going to launch the virtual ecosystem we developed over this period.

"Reclasteel strives to transform the way construction projects are getting executed in the steel industry, backed by an experienced team of tech entrepreneurs having successful track records in understanding customer requirements"

What are the biggest business challenges that you face in terms of leading the company forward? Also, how do you overcome those?

The biggest challenge in this particular industry is cash flow management and product/project delivery. So, we are soon going to back it by the standard operating procedures. To do so, we are trying to deploy a software system that will integrate the steel fabricators under one roof. Right now, we are working with 16-17 vendors under one roof, the software we are working on is going to be the solution for loopholes in this industry, which will also strengthen our supply chain.

What are some of the key milestones professionally that you think you've achieved as an entrepreneur?

I'm glad that the market welcome did a female running this company and still we got really good orders from TATA, and many other good MNCS, maybe because of the kind of value addition we are giving through the company.

For milestones, I would like to mention our first-ever order from the Whirlpool corporation worth around 2.5 crores. It was the biggest achievement to begin with, despite owning a factory or production facility. Precisely, the convincing pattern I used in terms of converting that order was really worthwhile, and our honesty and hard relished us results over numerous challenges. We have also participated in works at Balasaheb Thakrey Smarak, Mumbai.

Do you have any leadership philosophy or success mantra that favored you so far?

Yeah, firstly my honest suggestion- be true to your heart. No matter what kind of days come in, no matter what kind of experiences you have to go through, stick there and stand until things happen. Hence, it’s the relentless effort and honesty that will pay off.

What's your vision for the company going forward? Delineate your future plans.

There are many things that need to be done for aligning the multiple manufacturing heavy metal industry facility under one roof so that a resilient supply chain is created. And, as we are genuinely looking forward to this, we want to work on organizing the steel fabrication industry and majorly creating new technological or digital fronts for the steel and the steel construction industry.

Relay your thoughts on the current status of women's participation in traditionally male-dominated industries such as engineering or construction. How can women find more success in these fields?

Well, perceivably construction and engineering is a male-dominated sector, but that is changing now.

In my opinion, women have sound technical knowledge, and they're extensively sincere too in their work when it comes to project management. The only thing I feel looking at women in this industry is that they have to be more resilient because the things that happen in this business are robust. Disappointments will come along the way every now and then. Still, get to pursue your natural calling and never expect the world and people around you to be fair. Only hard-work can be a perfect answer to every battle we might face. Stay there. Don’t ever lose hope. Let’s thrive. The world will follow.

Shruti Gat, Founder & CEO, ReclaSteel

Holding a dual degree, one in Mechanical engineering, and the other in Fashion Designing, she is also good in art, classical dancing, and many more fields. By choice and inclination towards steel industry, she has now grown into a magnanimous figure with experience in diverse fields. It is her passion for steel and heavy machinery and relatively business, that has led her to being established as a renowned entrepreneur in the steel and steel construction industry today.