Sandvik Asia, the Indian arm of the Swedish group, is undergoing an operational restructure that it expects to complete by the year-end.

Mr Ajay Sambrani, who takes charge as Managing Director from October 1, said that the three business areas of the company has been split into five divisions — construction, mining, materials technology, machining solutions and Sandvik Ventures. Each division will have an independent head with full responsibility for profitability.

Mr Sambrani is the first Indian Managing Director in the history of the 51-year-old company.

“Once this is completed, we have an India strategy,” Mr Sambrani said, adding that the re-structuring will help the company achieve scalability and speed up decision-making. “Our product portfolio is large, and we want to take positions in all these spaces. We will also like to leverage India for sourcing.”

Among the areas he identified for growth were energy, construction and mining.

Outgoing Managing Director Mr Hakan Kingstedt said that the most important key to strategy was speed. “Sandvik was slow to act in the 2009 downturn,” he said, and added that the new structure will enable the organisation to react faster to market changes. “Now there were not too many layers for decision taking.”

Recently, the engineering group's global operations had also undergone a restructuring.

The growing importance of India on Sandvik's radar is evident from the fact that the group is holding its first global conference outside of Europe in New Delhi in the first week of October.

The company will hire people in India but there will be no such developments in Europe, Mr Kingstedt added.

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