SFO Technologies: One Stop Solution Provider for End-to-End
SFO Technologies: One Stop Solution Provider for End-to-End
SFO Technologies, known as the largest exporter of ESDM Services from India, is widely recognized as a highly flexible one stop shop solution partner for OEMs across the globe.
Incepted in 1990 as a Digital and Fiber Optic Manufacturing Company, SFO over the years has moved up the value chain by differentiating as a 'Vertically integrated concept to build solutions provider' with end to end focus on Hardware, Firmware & Software including Manufacturing Services covering industries like Aerospace & Defense, Communications, Energy & Industrial, Healthcare and Transportation.
In fact, there is no other company of Indian pedigree, offering such a diverse end-to-end competency like that of SFO.
SFO Technologies, headquartered in Kochi has manufacturing units, software development centers and R&D cells spread across Kochi, Trivandrum, Bangalore, Mysore and Pune.
SFO started their operations as an outsourced partner for hardware manufacturing to OEMs and has grown to become a total solutions provider, targeting diverse technology fields such as Digital Electronics, RF & Wireless, Cable & Wire harness, Power Supplies, Optronics, Mechanical & Plastic Packaging, Machining & Turning, Precision Machining & Tooling and Embedded Software, Middleware & Applications, GIS, etc.
Be it medical diagnostic equipment, cancer treatment equipment, or fiber optic passives used to digitize the villages of India, the company believes in humble contributions which are highly beneficial to address the humanitarian and social concerns of the world.
Spending on such socially relevant R&D efforts has provided the company with immense satisfaction, being an innovation-driven company.
SFO Technologies is the brainchild of two brothers, Javad K Hassan and N Jehangir who identified India's potential to be a successful player in the manufacturing sector.
A highly successful career in the USA with IBM & AMP acted as the trigger for Javad Hassan, Chairman of NeST group to start his own technology business in India with the able support of his younger brother N Jehangir.
Those were the days when software outsourcing had just begun to show a good success. With a strong belief that their novel business idea to venture into hardware outsourcing had a good potential to flourish in the future given the right price, quality, and on-time delivery, the pioneering partners, Javad and Jehangir joined hands to establish an electronic manufacturing business in India.
Unlike companies that flood the market with cheap, mass-manufactured products, the duo entered a niche market, one of high mix, low-volume manufacturing of engineered products for global OEMs.
And the play has paid handsomely over the last two decades with the company expanding their global footprint to Japan, USA, Germany, UK, and the Middle East spreading from healthcare to aerospace and almost everything in between.
In an era, when succession planning is a pain area for many of the family businesses, SFO has shown a model to follow by clearly being on top of this riddle.
With next generation truly in the saddle, technocrats Althaf Jehangir and Nazneen Jehangir, in their capacities as CEO & Executive Directors have steered the Hardware & Manufacturing and Software Businesses respectively to greater heights in the last decade.
With a highly innovative export strategy, SFO is the largest homegrown ESDM Exporter in India. Until now, it has over sixty Fortune 500 global OEs as customers, SFO being their preferred partner.
Armed with a smart and agile business model, SFO is committed to maintain and grow with these OEMs and add more such customers, creating win-win situations in future too. GE, Thales, Israel Aerospace, Stanley Black & Decker, Denso, UTAS, R.G.I.S, Bosch, Honeywell etc. are some of the renowned multinationals associated with SFO.
While the company is an exporter to fifty-six countries across the globe, they have also participated extensively in Make in India, Smart Cities, Offset programs and several others programs initiated by the Government of India.
SFO also ventured to build a SEZ at NeST Electronics city in Kochi with an intention to bring in multinationals who want to participate and make their success faster through the Make in India initiatives.
With an aim to deliver quality in every service and product, SFO over the past decades has practiced a quality management system, enthusing global leaders building advanced technology products and solutions for mission-critical applications to partner with them on a continuous basis.
ISO 9001; 2015, ISO 14001, 1SO 13485, As 9100D, TL 9000, CMMI ML5, Version 1.3, NADCAP, ISO 27001, ISO 26262, ESD S20:20, TS 16949 are all international quality and security standards to which SFO has been certified and speaks volumes about their quality systems and processes.
Since the world is converging as a single connected network, failure of even one business process may become a major concern for business continuity, which will encompass both internal elements like disaster recovery as well as external threats including cybercrime prevention to provide a resilient environment in every business process.
In the near future, IoT, analytics, and artificial intelligence will play a larger role in providing apt solutions for business continuity in businesses.
SFO is highly focused on this business reality. Beginning with certification of the company to ISO 27001 standards, the company has carved out a Centre of Excellence creating futuristic solutions in IoT and analytics for all of their lines of businesses.
In their march towards Industry 4.0, SFO has developed own Production Management System (PMS); which not only made the plant paperless but also enabled DPPM levels to become best in class.
This effort fetched them with the coveted KMA Nasscom Award for innovation. Further, their plants are quickly moving towards achieving Industry 4.0 levels by Smart factory enablement.
SFO is one of the few companies operating in Technology Business with a low attrition rate of three percent on an average for the past ten years. The silent transformation at SFO to build and maintain a robust People Process deserves a special mention here.
The latest awards received by SFO are:
N. Jehangir was awarded The Best Entrepreneur from ELCINA in 2017
Runner-up in Most Innovative Exporter of ECGC Indian Exporters' Excellence Awards 2017
EPCES Export Award for Outstanding Export Performance for the year 2015-16
Best Electronics Manufacturing company in 2016 from IESA
CII Design Excellence Award 2016
Collaboration Award from GE at the One GE Supplier Day, 2018
Besides these, SFO Technologies has also won several awards from customers like GE, Honeywell, and UTAS etc. for Cost, Quality, On-Time Delivery Performance, Innovation, Partnership, and Collaboration.
SFOs operations are spanning over three continents and they are now well poised to post many success stories in terms of technological advancements, soaring new quality heights and growing at a higher pace in the days to come.
SFO is not only set to grow organically and inorganically in the near future but also endeavors to achieve this in tandem with a performance-driven culture.
The company has the put in place successive leadership with a mix of young and experienced team enabling cross-functional team responsibility to steer the organization to become a billion-dollar company.
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