These plans were announced by Kishor Rathi and Pradeep Rathi who took over as managing directors of the company on Monday. Stepping down from his position was company founder Dr R J Rathi. While he relinquished the position of MD, the senior Rathi will continue as chairman of the company. His nephew Kishor will be looking after technology, new projects and production aspects while son Pradeep will focus on finance, marketing and management. The retiring Rathi said the appointment of two managing directors would not cause any conflicts and would instead complement each other as they had expertise in different areas.

Sudarshan Chemicals, which has been a pioneer in the organic and inorganic pigment industry, has a tie-up with the US $ nine billion Dainnipon Ink & Chemicals Inc of Japan. Dainnipon has a 29 per cent stake in the company. Dainnipon's chairman T Takahashi who was in Pune revealed that they would increase sourcing from Sudarshan for both the Japanese and other export markets. Both the companies have been working together on a number of research projects with Diannipon providing technology and R&D inputs. While Takahashi said that sourcing certain pigments from India was cheaper, he made it clear that the Japanese company had no plans to increase stake or make any fresh investments in the company.

Kishor Rathi said that the company was expanding its specialty pigment business by doubling capacity of the Pearl Essence pigment from 350 to 700 tonnes. This product is expected to add Rs 15 crore to the turnover.

Sudarshan currently has three plants in Maharashtra at Pune, Roha and Mahad. The company is chalking out plans to gradually reduce operations in Pune and move these operations to either Roha or Mahad. According to Dr Rathi, the Pune operations were becoming unviable and they would work towards gradually reducing operations here.