The Hindu Business Line : It's a steal

This one is for the Now Generation which sniffs at stainless steel as the kitchenware and cutlery of choice, steel being something that belongs to the era of grandmothers, and dowdy dowagers. Through the last decade, the thalis and katoris have been junked in favour of ceramics and glass. Huge irony then, that the past year-and-a-half has seen steel return in a big way to the forefront of style.

As I was wandering through the home store section of a large departmental store in New Delhi in the summer of 2001, I was stopped in my tracks by a display, which had some of the classiest pots and pans I had seen in a long time. The brand name was Magpie, and I searched for a Scandinavian or a German label (both countries are big on sparse, elegant design elements), but I was pleasantly surprised to discover that it was an Indian company. There were ice buckets, salt-and-pepper shakers, salad bowls, whisks, and cutlery: a colander, in particular, caught my fancy.

It was just the right shape and size for draining pasta, and it was something I had been searching for. I bore it home happily, and it has been sitting on my shelf since, doubling as a pasta-strainer, and a fruit basket.

It cost me Rs 495. My mother, who like her mother, had kilos of stainless steel bartans (plates, bowls, serving and cooking vessels, jugs, glasses, the works) and who decided to bequeath me some when I was setting up home, was horrified at the profligacy. That amount would have bought a whole tea set! But when you see the matte, smooth finish of the Magpie products, reflecting the light in a dull gleam, it is easy to forget that this is the same steel that your dusty bowls, mouldering in some dark corner of your kitchen, are made of.

That's because the steel is different. Says 26-year-old Arun Garg, who with partner and friend Vinod Jain, forged Magpie out of his family concern, "We import our steel from Germany and Japan." Garg's family has been manufacturing steel sheets, utensils and related products for the past 20 years. But now, seeing the potential of the Magpie kitchen, table and bar accessories in the international and Indian market, the family's energies are being devoted into making the young company a success.

The 100 per cent export start-up, five years ago, began with Garg's elder brother stumbling upon the fact that steel, much disdained by the trendy in his country, was a big fashion statement in Europe. He saw a 24-piece cutlery set priced at Rs 15,000; he thought that the set was great looking but priced exorbitantly. An alliance with companies in the West, which commissioned the company to make stainless steel products to their specifications turned into a realisation that the process could be reversed; that they could use their own design and production capacities to provide the same quality at extremely competitive rates in the Western markets. And, by the same token, sell them in the Indian market, as well.

They started tentatively with a fraction of their products in a few big stores in Delhi. "The response," says Garg, "was `fantastic'," and in a short span of a year-and-a-half, 110 Magpie products are in 90 premier stores in the country. They believe that within two to three years international companies with hi-design steel products should be entering the Indian market. "Before that happens," says Garg, "we want to make sure that they have established their brand as number one".

A word about stainless steel: basically, it is the chromium content mixed in iron which makes it `stainless', but you have to be careful about how much trace metals you alloy with the iron because an excess of any one would cause the steel to lose the very quality you want to use it for: its rigidity. The properties of the metal have to be engineered a certain way for it to be used for utensils. The actual casting of steel is a fairly expensive process. It has be molted and then cooled very gradually. The more the gradation in the cooling process is controlled, the more expensive it is. Only very good quality steel would support welding, which allows a seamless look to the product: all your ordinary stainless steel utensil can handle are ugly screws, which rust.

The Magpie array is impressive, even by the sleekest European standards. Some items you can expect to find on the shelves: a 24-piece cutlery-set, probably modelled on the one Garg's brother saw (Rs 5,995); a fruit basket (Rs 1,195), salad servers (Rs 595), champagne bucket (Rs 1,695), salt and pepper shakers (Rs 845).

There's more. Table accessories such as salad bowls and serving bowls, trays, salt and pepper mills, shakers, ash trays, etc would probably delight the just-marrieds. Your kitchen could use at least a few of these things: mixing bowls, colanders, canisters, kitchen roll holders, a cookery book holder. Of the bathroom bits and pieces, I like their dishy soap dispensers, especially the curved cylindrical one which looks straight out of a sci-fi movie.

It is nice to see an Indian company employ indigenous machining skills and designers (their team of designers abroad is being augmented by young people from Indian design institutes) to come up with a world-class product. Two of their designs that includes a futuristic bottle opener which is being featured in adverts these days in daily newspapers, are in the running for the prestigious Red Dot award hosted by Germany: it is the first time an Indian design has been given this recognition.

The author can be reached at Shubhrag@vsnl.com

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