A Passage to India for B.C. Exports?

On a warm April afternoon, Captain Mervyn Pinto gazes out at the rapidly evolving skyline of Vancouver from the bridge of Minaean International Corp.’s 13th-floor offices. Sunshine glistens on the glass towers of Georgia Street, while inside a cellphone vibrates on Pinto’s desk and an audio cue from the computer persistently reminds him of unread emails. He ignores the electronic noise, preoccupied by thoughts of expanding cityscapes worlds away from Lotusland.


As president and CEO of Minaean International, an upstart Vancouver-based company that builds structures of light-gauge steel targeted largely for the developing world, Pinto sees gold in the supercharged economy of India. His company has been nudging its way slowly toward big-time success in the Indian market, pitching its load-bearing steel-panel building system as both a quick salve for housing needs that emerge from natural and other humanitarian disasters and also as a safe and cost-effective alternative to conventional architecture. Underpinned by this business model, Minaean has seen annual revenues grow from US$500,000 in 2003, when the firm was just beginning to make inroads in India, to US$7 million by March 2009. But it’s not the scale of success Pinto has in mind – far from it in fact. 


“Look, we’re talking about a country that has known nothing but bricks-and-mortar construction for many centuries,” says Pinto, 60, an amiable native of Mangalore in the state of Karnataka, who says he spends about a quarter of each year in India. “It takes time, but it’s worth the effort.” In five years, he predicts, Minaean’s annual revenues could top $100 million. 


The reason for his optimism? India, with a population of almost 1.2 billion, has had one of the world’s fastest-growing economies in recent years, with 10 years of more than seven per cent annual GDP growth (peaking at 9.6 per cent in 2006). According to a 2007 report from Mc­Kinsey & Co., India’s middle class – which now sits at more than 300 million people – is expected to approach 600 million by 2025. And although India’s economy is not immune to the current global economic malaise, government economists are cheerily predicting continued growth of seven per cent for the current fiscal year and beyond.