India’s leading aluminium industry partner company JS Group celebrates Centennial Founder’s Day

Jiwanram Sheoduttrai (JS) Group, the multi-faceted organisation engaged in industrial marketing, manufacturingand turnkey project management and the trusted raw material and technology partner of aluminium businesses in India and abroad, recently celebrated the 100th birth anniversary of its key founding member, Late Satyanarain Prasad, in Kolkata.

The Centennial Founder’s Day celebration held at Arts Acre, Museum of Bengal Modern Art, in New Town, Kolkata, on August 8, reached a different level of success in presence of 300 plus guests who came in from different parts of the world.

As part of this Founder’s Day celebration, the JS family commemorated absence of Shri Satyanarain Prasad ji through his omnipresence. An elaborate programme was staged which saw one of his grandsons Mr. Abhimanyu Prakash making an audio-visual presentation on his illustrious life as a visionary and entrepreneur.

The programme also saw the inception of two annual programmes: Satyavritti Scholarship Programme, a yearly endowment by the JS Group towards educational advancements of its employees and children of its employees, and JS Star Performer Award aimed at recognizing exceptional talents in different fields of operations across business categories.

Shri Satyanarain Prasad ji was a non-conformist. Having been raised single-handedly by his mother, Smt Sheo Bai, in an otherwise conservative ‘Marwari’ family, Satyanarain ji went on to become the first post graduate in Marwari Society at that time in Varanasi, where the family hails from. He later went on to become a businessman and started Jiwan Oil Mill in Uttar Pradesh. Due to locational challenges, he then migrated to Calcutta and started a number of ventures before kicking off Jiwanram Sheoduttrai Group (JS).

JS Group has grown from a small yet credible agent to a handful of reputable manufacturers of major raw materials for the aluminium smelters in India and Europe to a project and technology partner of global repute. Once, its clientele included mainly Hindalco Renukut, Indal, Hirakud and Belgaon, BALCO and MALCO. Later, the base expanded to encompass NALCO and several other alumina and aluminium industry projects in Egypt, Brazil, Indonesia, Middle East, Greece, and African countries.

Shri Satyanarain ji’s vision is being currently lived and ably furthered by his children. His sons Vimal Prakash and Kamal Prakash have endeavoured to take the business to where it is today. JS has entered into EPC opportunities in aluminium companies, and today it stands tall among its peers as a successful partner to the projects like Green Anode Plant at Hindalco, Green Anode Plant in NALCO, Angul, Smelter Development projects in Hindalco Hirakud and Hindalco, Hindalco’s Aluminium Foil Conversion plant (equipment supply), conversion of old Soderberg Smelter to Prebake type in Belgaum, upgradation programme in MALCO, and the first 320 KA potline and allied plants installation in Balco's Korba site.

Over the years, JS has forged several significant tie-ups with the world’s leading technology and equipment manufacturing companies like VAW Germany, Wellman, Mechatherm, BROCHOT, Italy’s Cerutti, MB Laminating Machine, Flexotechnica Flexo Press, and TECHMO.

The new business divisions, subsidiaries and joint ventures formed during this hundred years of journey include Unimark International (Aluminium Division), Flexible Packaging Division, HART (Process Control System), Dominion Uniseven Engineering & Infrastructure Pvt. Ltd (EPC Division), Unimark Metallurgical Pvt. Ltd, and Associated Industrial Furnaces Pvt. Ltd. JS has also set foothold in the overseas market with the formation of Unimark China Ltd and Unimark West Asia FZC.

AlCircle Pte Ltd. is one of the most unique and futuristic of all the ventures that JS has started in this spectacular journey of 100 years. The digital business entity draws its essence from the concept of Virtual Aluminium Ecosystem which brings in all the stakeholders of the aluminium industry value chain right from Bauxite, Alumina, and Aluminium to Downstream Aluminium, End Users, and Secondary Aluminium under one roof. It provides the latest information, data-based insights, and cutting-edge online marketing services which facilitate faster and smarter business decision making.

With a user base spanning across more than 134 countries globally and more than 6 million views in a month, AlCircle is marching ahead to become the single-point reference for all aluminium industry people. It recently launched www.chinese.alcircle.com at ALUMINIUM China 2017. It is bringing up more value-added services. The website hopes to offer more language specific services in the future depending on expansion of the aluminium market.