A Passage to India for B.C. Exports?

Such rapid growth has the country bursting at the seams, leading India’s government to earmark more than US$550 billion for infrastructure spending in its current five-year economic plan. But even that staggering amount will do little to alleviate a housing shortfall that the government in New Delhi pegs at more than 24 million units. The country will need investment and building expertise. And so as India – a place where ox carts jockey for space on the street with Mercedes – attempts to build a modern economy, Pinto dreams about building a fortune for his Vancouver-based construction enterprise.


Mervyn Pinto’s career began not on a dust-filled construction site but in the frenetic ports of India where, at the fresh age of 25, he became the youngest captain in India’s merchant navy, commanding freighters as large as 50,000 tonnes around the world. In 1977 he captained the first ship to christen the docks of the Persian Gulf’s then-new port in Jebel Ali, Dubai (now the Gulf’s busiest). By 1991, working on behalf of the shipping company Norpol Marine (of which he was part owner), Pinto was in command of Gulf cleanup operations after Saddam Hussein’s retreating army had laid waste to the desert oil fields of Kuwait. Along the way he even dabbled in film, producing a movie called Mog ani Moipas, or Love and Affection, though he acknowledges that the effort didn’t exactly catapult him onto the red carpets of Bollywood. In 1994 Pinto moved to Vancouver, searching for a better quality of life and more opportunities for his wife, son and daughter. However, the globetrotting pace of international shipping proved hard on his family, and within a few years he was ready for change. 


Minaean was formed in 2000 as a fledgling research and development company focused on steel-based construction technology. A year later, while Minaean was developing its building system and Pinto was serving as events chairman for the Canada-India Business Council, he helped to host an Indian delegation that included players in the construction industry seeking partnerships and investment from Canadian interests. Pinto made valuable connections, and as he was bidding farewell to the delegation he sensed an entrepreneurial buzz in the air. “I already knew that the potential of the Indian construction market was huge, and the conference confirmed it,” Pinto says. 


Minaean’s technology was ready for road testing, and in 2001 it would get that test. On January 26, while Pinto was in India meeting business leaders and angling for contracts, a massive earthquake, measuring 7.9 on the Richter scale, rocked the state of Gujarat. It killed more than 20,000 people, injured 166,000 and destroyed some one million homes, most of them bricks-and-mortar abodes that crumpled under the force of the quake. As the state began mopping up, Pinto approached Indian officials with the idea of show­casing the benefits of Minaean’s technology: seismically robust, lightweight and relatively quick and straightforward to prefabricate. 


Minaean managed to score a small contract for a few buildings in one of the towns devastated by the Gujarat quake – in essence, demonstration homes where officials could view the unfamiliar construction technology in use. But almost immediately, Minaean encountered bureaucratic resistance; combined with skyrocketing steel prices, it made for a decidedly muted debut. 


Still, the deal served as a toehold in India and led to a strategic alliance with Tata Steel that would secure preferred prices for Minaean’s future projects on the subcontinent. Over the next few years, Minaean continued to grow and expand, and in 2003 Vancouver venture capitalist Hari Varshney came aboard to help take the company public (Minaean’s shares are now traded on the TSX Venture Exchange and on the Berlin and Frankfurt stock exchanges). Then, three years later, the company got its first big break.