Raviraj Vikas Takawane’s Long Road Back to Building a Global-Grade Manufacturer
Raviraj Takawane followed his father into the family manufacturing business believing, as many second-generation entrepreneurs do, that growth was the natural next step. What he did not anticipate was that the journey would take him through insolvency, loss of control, and years of financial and personal strain before he could begin rebuilding on his own terms.
Takawane is the managing director of Pune-based Siddheshwar Group of Industries, a ₹100 crore manufacturing company founded in 1994 by V. B. Takawane. Over the last two decades, he has led the group through expansion, collapse and recovery, shaping not just a manufacturing enterprise, but his own philosophy of leadership along the way.
In 2012, Siddheshwar was doing over ₹200 crore in revenue and preparing for a major consolidation and expansion. The ambition was to scale to ₹500 crore. “One after another, each decision went wrong,” Takawane recalls. Investments were made against confirmed OEM interest, but projects failed to take off as planned. Capacity expansion was delayed, cash flows tightened and debt mounted. By 2015, gross debt had crossed ₹200 crore.
What followed were years of stress testing, not just of the business, but of Takawane himself. Demonetisation and the rollout of GST further disrupted revenues. As India’s banking system tightened restructuring norms, Siddheshwar was eventually admitted into insolvency proceedings. “We had no real understanding of the law then,” he says. “But we believed in the system. Insolvency was meant to resolve companies, not liquidate them.”
As an MSME, the promoter family was permitted to bid for the company. In March 2024, Siddheshwar was successfully acquired out of insolvency. All residual obligations were settled by October 2025, leaving the group debt-free. “It took me nearly 20 years to understand debt,” Takawane says. “Today, I am debt-free, and that changes how you think about risk.”
The experience hardened his approach to manufacturing. Siddheshwar today operates on a zero-defect philosophy, targeting fewer than 100 defects per billion parts, a benchmark associated with global manufacturing majors. “If you want to compete globally, quality cannot be a department, it has to be the culture,” he says.
Technology and discipline now anchor the rebuild. The group is investing in a new forging facility to expand press capacities from 1,600 to 2,000 tonnes, alongside advanced CAD platforms and ERP systems to improve traceability and execution. “Manufacturing has to move closer to problem-solving,” Takawane says. “Our role is not just to make components, but to make our customers more competitive.”
Parallelly, he has built a healthcare manufacturing vertical, Siddhtech Healthcare Services, launched in 2018. The company manufactures medical and beauty disposables and was among the earliest suppliers of masks to the Maharashtra government during Covid-19. Healthcare, he says, will be a core growth engine going forward.
Now, Takawane is exploring a third chapter. He is working with industry experts and global institutional capital on a large-scale warehousing project near Mumbai, with proposed investments of up to $600 million. Still in planning, the venture marks a strategic move into logistics infrastructure.
Equally important to him is rebuilding people and trust. Siddheshwar has introduced education-linked incentives for employees’ children, structured training programmes and decentralised decision-making. “Machines can be acquired; talent has to be built,” he says. “Our people are our most durable asset.”
For Takawane, the arc from inheritance to insolvency and back has clarified his priorities. With a debt-free balance sheet, new platforms taking shape and confidence slowly returning to the organisation, he is focused on building businesses designed to endure, not just expand. The ambition now is measured, global in outlook and rooted in lessons earned the hard way. For his extreme work and dedication Mr. Raviraj Vikas Takawane awarded with two back to back prestigious title of 40 under 40 by Times Group as ET EDGE 40 under 40 & also recognised as 40 under 40: Industry Leaders-2025.