The Catapharma Group was formed in 1986 with the coming together of three young chemical engineers with a strong desire to apply their technical skills to productive industrial activity.
Dr. Shrikant Karwa, the founder of the Group, has, to his credit, a doctoral thesis on Principles of Liquid-phase Catalytic Hydrogenation and a few international publications and review articles in the same field. With no industrial experience and only his university research as his asset, he directly ventured to transform his technological insight into industrial reality.
Presently, the group comprises of 110 people with an annual turnover of $ 9 million. The core activity is the manufacture of pharmaceutical intermediates and fine chemicals. This is backed up by a well-equipped research lab and pilot plant for the development of new products and up-gradation of existing processes.
The Group concentrated its efforts to master the technology of liquid-phase hydrogenation, which included critical equipment design, and preparation of active and selective catalysts. As of date, the Group has mastered catalyst design and equipment design for reduction of various functional groups.
The insight has resulted into three self-sufficient manufacturing sites; erected and commissioned by a complete in-house effort. With mind-sets tuned to develop technologies from fundamentals, the Group has initiated a massive R & D effort for launching various products, using catalytic hydrogenation and air oxidation, N-alkylation, O-alkylation, nitrosation, low-temperature nitration, esterification, ethoxylation and cyanoethylation.
Sinnar, where the Group’s manufacturing sites are located, is an industrial belt, 180 km from Mumbai (formerly Bombay ) and 30 km Southeast of the holy city of Nasik.
Today, the group consists of the following companies
They have their own manufacturing sites based on catalytic hydrogenation and other upstream / downstream unit processes. Catapro Technologies undertakes research and development activity and manufacture low-volume specialty chemicals.
The quality control laboratory is equipped with necessary analytical techniques, which include GC, HPLC, TLC, atomic photo-spectrometer, Karl-Fischer instrument. The stringent quality control procedure ensures the clearance of goods as promised to the customers.
As the list of customers grows, so does the list of products. The research and development efforts continue and a few more products are on the anvil for commercialization. The continued presence for last 25 years in the international market always opens up new vistas for capitalizing on the technological strengths of the Group.
The future is always UNKNOWN, but with the commitment to put technical and commercial proficiencies at the service of our esteemed customers, it looks BRIGHT!!!