History
In a country that used the automobile horn almost as much as the brake, it was a tough challenge to create durable, reliable, and good-sounding auto horns in the 1970s. The development of Roots Electric Horns took almost a decade to attain fruition. In the meantime, the company made inroads into the air horn market with the first-of-its-kind electric air horns.
BRED FROM A MOTIVATION
The foundation of Roots, was laid down in 1970, at Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu by Mr. K. Ramasamy (Founder & Chairman). From a young age, he had a unique attraction towards automotive horns. In those days, the quality & durability of automotive horns was quite stale and despite the limited number of cars being made in India, automotive horns were imported from offshore nations like Germany, the UK, Japan, and USA. This emerging deficit brought up the idea to procure quality horns in India.
ROLE OF RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
R&D plays an indispensable role in producing and fulfilling the purpose of a product in the market. On that note, Roots invests on in-depth R&D to procure well-engineered products and make continual improvements parallelly. Roots’ R & D is acknowledged, by the Ministry of Science and Technology – Department of Scientific and Industrial Research covering the objectives of design, development, up-gradation, innovation and value engineering.
Furthermore, 2 Generations of experience in product development help in understanding customer preferences and to create merchandise, that transcends expectation. The company spends 2% of its annual sales on R&D and plans to take it up to 4% soon. It has a highly automated plant in Coimbatore, having an independent department of 25 Engineers engaged in new product development.
QUALITY – A PRIMAL PILLAR
Commitment to world-class products and services, exceeding customer expectations with due concern for the environment and society has helped Roots create niche expertise in the market. Factors such as employee involvement, technical innovation, cost reduction, constant innovation in merchandise and compliance to QMS requirement, further attributes to quality.
Their quality is reflected in their behaviour, Governance and Human relation. In short, from head to toe Roots is reinforced with quality. “Quality is our foundation and we didn’t compromise on that. As a result, it took us 12 years to develop a product of international quality. We had competition from international players like Lucas from England and Hella from Germany but we could compete with them purely because of our exceptional quality standards,” says Mr. Ramasamy. Roots’ quality has been recognized by International standards namely IATF16949:2016, ESD S20.20:2014, ISO14001:2015, ISO45001:2018, EN9100:2018, ISO13485:2016. These quality certificates further attribute their stringent nature towards standards. Roots, is equipped with cutting-edge machinery and revolutionary methodologies that can devise simple solutions even for a complex problem.