Featured
Mr. Aravind Melligeri
Chairman & CEO of Aequs
For Aravind Melligeri, Chairman & CEO of Aequs, creating long term value through innovative strategies is a relentless, lifelong pursuit.
In 2009, Aravind set up the first-of-its-kind, integrated ecosystem for aerospace component manufacturing in India. The Aequs ecosystem, spread over 250 acres in Belagavi, India, is home to world class precision machining, surface treatment, forging, and aerospace assembly facilities. Aravind believes that modern manufacturing is driven by two forces: continuous innovation and uninhibited collaboration. From inception, these two factors have been central to the growth and success of the Aequs ecosystem.
Aravind also strongly believes that growing Aerospace manufacturing in India requires greater collaboration across Indian industry to fully develop and maximize the effectiveness of India’s indigenous resources.
Aequs’ global ecosystem is able to bring scale and efficiency through organic growth as well as acquisitions. Aequs’ global reach extends beyond its facilities in Belagavi, India to nine sites in North America and Europe. These sites are strategically located in cost-competitive regions and in close proximity to its strategic customer base. This operating model optimizes the value stream for customers by reducing lead times and simplifying logistics.
In addition to its global holdings, Aequs’ portfolio includes joint venture partnerships with world-class companies: Magellan Aerospace of Canada, Setforge and Aubert & Duval, both of France, and Saab AB of Sweden.
Under Aravind’s leadership, Aequs has achieved a number of firsts. In 2009, Aequs became the first Indian private sector player to secure major orders from Airbus Industrie. In 2015, Aequs was the first Indian aerospace company to acquire manufacturing operations in the U.S. with the purchase of T&K Machine in Texas. In January 2016, Aequs completed the purchase of France-based SiRA Group to further extend its aerospace ecosystem into Europe. With these acquisitions, Aequs employment has grown to over 1500 people worldwide.
Aravind serves on the board of QuEST Global, a company he co-founded in 1997, which is a globally recognized provider of outsourced engineering services with over 7500 employees in nine countries based at over 15 delivery locations. Aravind holds a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the National Institute of Technology Karnataka and a Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Pennsylvania State University. He has been conferred the ‘Young Achiever Award’ by the Indo-American Society.