India’s manufacturing story is most often narrated through production figures, export numbers, investment announcements and the inauguration of new factories. Each arrival of an advanced machine tool, an automation line, a robot or a digital manufacturing platform is celebrated as another milestone in the country’s ambition to become a global manufacturing powerhouse. Yet behind every successful manufacturing company stands an individual whose journey rarely finds a place in this public conversation.
It is the entrepreneur who mortgaged family land to buy the first machine. It is the engineer who spent decades perfecting a machining process, the technologist who quietly solved production challenges no textbook had prepared him for, and the first-generation businessman who built customer confidence one component at a time. These are the people who have strengthened India’s industrial foundation over decades, and yet their stories have largely remained confined within factory walls.
As India moves steadily towards becoming a preferred global manufacturing destination, it is perhaps time to acknowledge a simple truth: manufacturing excellence is built by people before it is built by machines. Policies create opportunities, technology enables productivity, and capital builds factories, but it is people — with their courage, discipline, curiosity, resilience and relentless pursuit of improvement — who transform those opportunities into globally competitive manufacturing enterprises.
It was this conviction that led Machine Maker, India’s B2B media platform dedicated to the manufacturing sector, to launch Manufacturing Maestros in 2025. The initiative was never conceived as another award function. It was envisioned as a platform to document and celebrate the journeys of manufacturing entrepreneurs who have quietly contributed to India’s industrial growth — not merely to felicitate successful business leaders, but to preserve their journeys, inspire future generations and create stronger connections across India’s manufacturing ecosystem.
Over the past year, that vision has grown into a nationwide movement. Travelling through six industrial cities — from Chhatrapati Sambhaji Nagar and Coimbatore to Ahmedabad, Hyderabad and Ludhiana — Manufacturing Maestros brought together more than 750 entrepreneurs, manufacturing leaders, technology providers, industry associations and manufacturing professionals, and documented the remarkable journeys of 49 Manufacturing Maestros representing diverse sectors of Indian manufacturing.
Each story has reflected a different dimension of India’s industrial transformation. Some Maestros began with a single conventional lathe; others emerged from farming families, government schools or modest workshops. Several survived economic downturns, technology disruptions and changing market demands before becoming globally respected manufacturers, and many today export to Europe, the United States, Japan and other demanding markets, quietly proving that Indian manufacturing can compete with the very best. What makes these journeys distinctive is that none of them is a story of overnight success. They are stories measured in decades — of continuous improvement, of learning through failure, and of the patience that manufacturing alone teaches.
Every Maestro featured by Machine Maker goes through an extensive storytelling process. Long-format interviews are carefully researched, documented and transformed into documentary-style films, print features and digital stories. Rather than dwelling only on business achievements, these narratives explore childhood struggles, technical learning, entrepreneurial risks, customer relationships, technology adoption and the personal philosophies that shaped each leader’s journey. Interestingly, the impact of these stories has travelled well beyond readers. Many Maestros admitted that revisiting their own journeys reminded them of how far they had come; employees discovered stories they had never heard about their founders; customers gained a deeper appreciation of the companies they work with; and young engineers found role models whose beginnings closely resembled their own aspirations. Recognition became reflection, reflection became inspiration, and that inspiration has begun to spread through the manufacturing community.
For readers of Gear Technology India, it is worth noting that several of the 49 Maestros represent the quiet evolution of India’s gear manufacturing ecosystem. Gears may remain hidden inside vehicles, wind turbines, machine tools, industrial equipment and aerospace systems, but they constitute one of the most demanding disciplines in manufacturing, calling for exceptional levels of engineering capability, process discipline, tooling expertise, metrology, heat treatment and quality control. Behind these capabilities stand entrepreneurs who have devoted their entire careers to precision engineering.
One of them is Ashok Kumar Sen, founder of TASA Micro SPM. Mr Sen began his career in tool design at Escorts before establishing his company in Faridabad in 1995, starting with special-purpose jigs and fixtures. Three decades later, TASA has grown into one of India’s most respected builders of special-purpose machines, with broaching systems and post-hobbing solutions — gear-tooth deburring, chamfering, rounding and pointing — that serve gear manufacturers across the automotive, defence and aerospace sectors. With more than 400 machines in service across India, and the company recently showcasing indigenous engineering at EMO Hannover 2025, his journey demonstrates how home-grown machine building can raise productivity while reducing dependence on imported technology.
Every precision gear, however, begins with a precision cutting tool, and it is on this critical link in the value chain that Naresh Gupta, Managing Director of ESGI Tools, has quietly built his life’s work. From Patiala in Punjab, the company he leads has, since 1991, supplied gear hobs, shaper cutters, shaving cutters, master gears and rack milling cutters to more than 300 customers in over 20 countries, backed by coating and re-sharpening services and a culture of close collaboration with users. Through continuous improvement in gear-cutting tool technology, ESGI has enabled manufacturers to achieve higher productivity, longer tool life and better machining performance — a reminder that manufacturing leadership is often built on technical depth rather than public visibility.
In Bengaluru, Sulaiman Jamal, Managing Director of Bevel Gears (India), part of the Jamal Group, reflects yet another dimension of this evolution. The company is a composite bevel gear manufacturer supplying everything from prototypes to production volumes for applications across industries — its gears have even flown aboard India’s Chandrayaan missions, placing Indian gearing, quite literally, on the moon. Like many enduring enterprises, his journey has been shaped not by dramatic moments but by thousands of disciplined decisions taken consistently over many years, and it is that consistency which has become the foundation of customer confidence in specialised gear manufacturing.
The story of Harish Mehta of Emmbros Autocomp reinforces the same philosophy from the foothills of Himachal Pradesh. A first-generation entrepreneur, Mr Mehta founded the company in 1991 and built it into a trusted manufacturer of differential, driveline and transmission components — spindles, sprockets, spools and rear axle shafts — for leading global OEMs. Across more than four decades in the automotive industry, he has focused on earning trust through quality, delivery performance and manufacturing discipline, demonstrating that long-term customer relationships are built not through aggressive marketing but through years of dependable engineering.
These leaders represent different businesses, different technologies and different markets, yet they are united by one common belief — that manufacturing excellence is built patiently, over time.
Manufacturing Maestros has equally recognised the technology providers who enable manufacturers to keep raising their capabilities. One such example is Nimble Machines, the gear machinery vertical of the UCAM Group and a strategic partner of the initiative. Launched in 2015 and operating from Dobaspet on the outskirts of Bengaluru, Nimble Machines builds the VAJRA series of CNC gear hobbing machines — spanning workpieces up to module 8 and 400 mm diameter — and the TARANG-325 five-axis spiral bevel gear generator, giving Indian gear manufacturers access to world-class machines built at home. Its association with Manufacturing Maestros reflects another objective of the initiative: bringing manufacturing companies and technology partners onto a common platform where ideas, experience and innovation can be shared openly.
That, perhaps, is the initiative’s most lasting impact. Manufacturing Maestros has become much more than a recognition platform; it has become a community. Every event has created opportunities for entrepreneurs to meet machine tool builders, tooling companies, metrology experts and automation specialists, and conversations that begin on stage have continued over dinner tables, factory visits, collaborative projects and long-term professional relationships. In many ways, the initiative has demonstrated that storytelling itself can become an enabler of manufacturing — every documented journey becomes a source of learning, every recognised entrepreneur becomes a mentor, and every gathering strengthens the industrial network that ultimately drives collaboration, innovation and growth.
As India continues its journey towards becoming a global manufacturing powerhouse, initiatives like Manufacturing Maestros remind us that industrial growth cannot be measured only in exports, production volumes or investment announcements; it must also be measured by the strength of the people who build the ecosystem. Machines may define capability, factories may define scale, and technology may define competitiveness — but it is people who define manufacturing. The first season celebrated 49 such individuals, and as the initiative enters its second season across Bengaluru, Pune, Noida, Vadodara, Chennai and Kolhapur, with more than 55 Maestros to be recognised, its purpose remains unchanged: to honour those who quietly build the nation, preserve their journeys for future generations and inspire the next wave of manufacturing entrepreneurs.
Because behind every gear that transmits power, every precision component that enables motion and every machine that drives industry, there is a human story waiting to be told. And those stories deserve to be celebrated.
Hari Shanker, Founder, Machine Maker
Hari Shanker is the Founder, Publisher and Managing Editor of Machine Maker, India’s leading B2B media platform dedicated to manufacturing. A media professional with over 28 years of experience — 24 of them exclusively covering manufacturing — he began his journey with Industrial Business MART in 2004 and reshaped Machine Maker in 2018 as a storytelling platform built around the people, products and processes behind Make in India. He is the creator of industry initiatives, including Manufacturing Maestros and Womanufacturing, which celebrate India’s manufacturing entrepreneurs and women in industry. He can be reached at hari@themachinemaker.com.
