WHY ZERMATT FAILS IN WASTEWATER TREATMENT
Shitin is my classmate from Chemical Engineering - IIT Madras class of ’74. While Shitin went on to the IIFT in New Delhi ( Foreign Trade mind you, not Film Technology) for post graduation, I got a tuition waiver and teaching assistantship at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, and dutifully made my way to the Volunteer State of the USA.
Now, Shitin is a very gregarious and outgoing person, in sharp contrast to yours truly. While I was away from the homeland, he completed his IIFT, and signed up with Zermatt, a high tech boiler manufacturer in his home town in Maharashtra . While at it, Zermatt was also a leader in the peripherals required for a boiler, such as good Water Treatment Plants. Shitin initially was posted in the boilers division, and using our friendship, buttered up my father, who was Technical Head of a Company which required boilers in no mean numbers, and sold my father lock, stock and boiler.
Shitin, good fellow that he is, continued to show great interest in my progress at Vanderbilt, and was already selling his Company – Zermatt to me, if and when I returned to India. He was very keen that I signed up for a job with Zermatt in the Water and Wastewater Treatment Division.
True to his word, the day I landed in India Zermatt by that time. Indian Airlines return tickets were promptly sent to me thru India Bombay to a city next door, when travel by road would have been much more comfortable and preferable, just to demonstrate the High tech culture of Zermatt . A Company car was in waiting at the makeshift aerodrome, to pick up yours truly and transport me directly to the Director’s abode in the outskirts of the city. Boy ! was I impressed or what ?
The interview itself was a damp squib, with the Director telling me to get “ my feet wet” in the business in India : My Salary expectation was way beyond what Zermatt was prepared to offer. We shook hands, parted as friends after a couple of glasses of beer.
The story now shifts to almost 20 years after that fateful event. Shitin was now a director in Zermatt , heading the Water and Wastewater Division. I cut my teeth in the early years at Dorr- Oliver and later at Voltas in environmental Engineering, in all aspects of the game, starting from basic design, selling, and erection and commissioning of mega treatment projects, hands on. In the year 1986, I moved to Bangalore from Bombay
Shitin calls me up one day and says “ Hey Ananth : I have a problem here in our Company. We do extremely well in Water treatment, but are failing miserably in Wastewater Treatment. I want you to come and have a look at our setup and tell me where we are going wrong.”
I airdashed to the HQ city of Zermatt – checked into Hotel Blue Diamond ( The one and only good hotel at that time ) and the next morning reported for work at Zermatt . Shitin unfortunately was away on tour, and I was escorted around the facilities by his less than willing majordomo. One look around the Wastewater division of Zermatt told me all I wanted to know : Salesmen of every description at every desk, wearing ties of varying vintage, busy making proposals and selling wastewater treatment plants using Hi Falutin’ acronyms like FAB, SAFF, SBBR, FCUK, #@&% etc., with absolutely no idea of what all these things really meant.
At random, I picked a middle aged gentleperson with apparently good taste in his choice of ties, and asked him what BOD meant to him. His answer startled me. Said he “ that is a query you must direct to our technical Division - I only sell and scoot.”.
I had had enough by this time of Zermatt ’s Wastewater Division and got dropped back to Blue Diamond for a more satisfactory time at lunch in their restaurant.
Moral of the Story : Wastewater treatment is not about selling and scooting : It is a purely technical service of the highest order. Both Zermatt and their competitor of the same breed – Zeon Inchange suffer from identical malaise in this respect to this day. Take my word for it.
Dr. Ananth S Kodavasal May 30, 2011
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