Quest Global‘s Venkata Sai Kolisetti talks to Defence Capital editor N. C. Bipindra about his company’s unique selling proposition, its strategy, and how it retains aerospace and defence customers for the long run.
New Delhi/Hyderabad: Quest Global, started in 1997 by its chief executive officer Ajit Prabhu, began its operations by solving customers’ problems, and that value is still intact, the company’s general manager and vertical solutions partner for aerospace and defence, Venkata Sai Kolisetti, told Defence Capital in an interview.
“Throughout the company, we still go after customer problems whenever we talk to them,” Kolisetti said. Over the years, Quest Global spread to multiple verticals, including transportation, semiconductors, aerospace, and defence. Under transportation, the company covers rail and automotive. “That’s how we are diversified.”
Quest Global is a “pure-play engineering” company. “Engineering is all we do. However, we use digital to solve engineering problems. So that’s where our digital quotient comes into the picture.”
A 20,000-plus workforce company spread globally in multiple nations, Quest Global’s India operations have a large number of delivery centres in both Tier 1 and 2 cities. The end-to-end solutions come as a menu of services, including support to an aerospace original equipment manufacturer or an aeroengine manufacturer.
“We support them through the complete product life cycle, from the concept initiation to design to analysis to manufacturing, engineering to aftermarket. So we support them throughout the product life cycle, and we have various services that we can provide. We do CAD services, process planning, manufacturing duties, and many more,” Kolisetti said.
The way Quest Global provides value to the customers is to focus on the problem statement during discussion with the customer, rather than just providing our resources. “Anybody can provide resources, but solving problems is our unique proposition. This is a big challenge for others.”
The company goes back to the drawing board, bringing multidisciplinary teams to discuss solutions, involving multiple services required to resolve the customer’s problem. “We ensure the problem doesn’t recur in the manufacturing process. We go to the root cause and fix the original problem that is causing defects.”
The company maps out all the current processes of the customer related to a particular problem and offers multiple services that would be required to fix the overall manufacturing cycle. For example, a designer facing a problem may not be completely aware of the aftermath. Similarly, a customer with an aftermath problem may not know the entire design phase.
“That’s where we bring them to the drawing board and look at the problem in its entirety. We start from scratch, understand the complete process cycle, and fix it at the stage where the problem is occurring. That’s where Quest Global differentiates itself from its competitors.”
Quest Global has also mastered the art of retaining its customers and clients effectively. This includes some of its earliest customers, who have been with the company for 15 years or more now through strategic relationships. Even its first-ever customer is still around, working with Quest Global for over 25 years.
“What we believe in is fewer customers but deeper relations. Because we don’t want to go around all the available aerospace and defence customers and do bits and pieces. Deeper relations mean we can solve customer problems that would get us business. This also means that we have a responsibility to the world because we are working on a sensitive area like aerospace and defence.”
Giving the example of car driving, Kolisetti noted that in the aerospace and defence sector, a “zero defect industry,” one can’t just park the aircraft midair if there is a breakdown, like we do with cars. “Of course, the rules are also so strict with the FAA or EASA that we must ensure the quality is met at any cost. So quality comes first.”
Quest Global’s centres in India have a global approach, wherein it does most of our support engineering from India. “So we have some of the engineers working closely and interfacing with the customer, and we do have a majority of the teams based out of India supporting engineering from here, and we currently have about seven offshore development centers, which are all multi-disciplinary,” Kolisetti said.
Quest Global has a centre in Hyderabad for aerospace and defense customers and is also spread across Bangalore, Belagavi, and Ahmedabad. Quest Global also has its centres at Chennai, Trivandrum, and many other places for other sectors.
It also has offices in the United States and the United Kingdom, as well as Europe and Japan. The company serves almost all aircraft manufacturers and aero-engine makers globally. For example, Quest Global is currently executing performance improvement programmes for various aircraft and aero-engines that are flying around the world.
For the rest of the interview, watch this Defence Capital Conversation below:
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