The State of Business 2013

Dressed up, but nowhere to go

Poor infrastructure dogs existing companies and no new industrial project has come up in the Nashik belt

Tushar Mane

The drive from Nashik to Sinnar is barely 30 km, but don’t make any bets on how long it will take. On a bad day, you could spend over two hours on this two-lane stretch choked with smoke-belching vehicles of all shapes and sizes. It’s been a decade since a four-lane highway was promised between the two industrial towns but nothing’s moved on that. “All of us opened shop in Sinnar when we heard there was going to be good connectivity between the two places,” rues Sudhir Badgujar, owner of Ashwini Industries. With a turnover of around ₹5 crore, Ashwini has two units that manufacture high density polyethylene bottles and fabric bags. These eventually go to clients such as Multimol Micro Fertilizer Industries, Royal Agro Foods Industries and Vaibhav Agro Industries. Like a multitude of other people, he lives in Nashik (and lives quite well, by his own admission) and works in Sinnar.