Sameer Parikh: Epitome of an Earnest Operator

By Luke King

From Issue 2, 2024 of Breakbulk Magazine.

(5-minute read)

Today, Mumbai-based Sameer Parikh heads one of India’s largest heavy transport companies – the culmination of a 30-year career in the logistics industry. Remarkably, he dedicated an uninterrupted three-decade tenure to family business Lift & Shift, a household name among the Indian project cargo community that executed some of the country’s largest and most prestigious heavy-lift projects over the years.

Now in his mid-50s, Sameer Upendra Parikh was born in October 1968 in Bijapur, Karnataka. His grandmother was an early source of positivity and Parikh recalls how she would rise early in the morning to begin Hindu prayers at 0400 hrs. After graduating from MS Ramaiah Institute of Engineering in Bangalore with a Bachelor of Engineering in Electronics and Telecom in 1990, Parikh briefly flirted with the idea of studying for an MBA in the U.S.

He was instead drawn to Mumbai, and to Lift & Shift, part of a group of companies carrying the name of Parikh’s grand uncle, Natvar Parikh. “I selected joining business rather than going to America and it was the right decision – I don’t regret not going for the MBA, for sure.”

Working Through the Group

Parikh found no special treatment at the family firm and the then 22-year-old forwarder was quickly thrown in at the deep end. His on-the-job education began in the early 1990s with spells in the group’s air freight, customs and container warehousing divisions, followed by a move to Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT) in Mumbai, India’s largest maritime terminal, where the company held the contract to manage international container operations. Earlier, in 1979, the family was responsible for handling the first container on Indian shores, also in Mumbai, Parikh proudly recalls.

When the company lost the JNPT contract several years later, Parikh returned to the core logistics business and found a footing in the world of project cargo in 1997. He never looked back.

Reliance Industries Ltd, the Mumbai-based conglomerate and India’s largest private sector employer to this day, had commissioned the world’s biggest paraxylene plant at an integrated petrochemicals complex in Jamnagar, Gujarat. In 1997, Parikh and his Lift & Shift colleagues were tasked with coordinating the movement of the heaviest equipment fabricated in India at the time. The client, Larsen and Toubro (L&T), commissioned Lift & Shift to move a regenerator weighing 1,500 tonnes from a yard in Hazira (also Gujarat) to the RIL Jamnagar Sikka site, using barges and road transportation.

“We were the only Indian company that had the self-propelled modular trailers at that time, so we had the advantage of being able to compete with the Mammoets and the ALEs of the day. That was when we really made our first move into major projects, doing things that people thought could not happen.”

Mentoring and Marine Assets

Parikh initially benefited from the mentorship of his uncle Azad Parikh for port and container operations and later, for projects and heavy-lift, Apurva Parikh (another uncle) and Upendra Parikh (his father), who guided and trained him in the finer points of the trade. Being an engineer, he quickly adapted to the megaprojects the company was handling.

Contracts with L&T, Godrej, Reliance, Thermax and others facilitated continued investment in assets, including the purchase of India’s first self-propelled modular transporters (SPMTs) from Nicolas Industrie in France, to service the ever-increasing demands of Lift & Shift’s industrial clientele. A self-described “Nicolas man”, Parikh and Lift & Shift would remain loyal Nicolas customers until the brand was retired in 2018, following its earlier acquisition by the German TII group.

The company also invested heavily in marine assets and carried out countless projects in India and beyond using barges, which are “not always the cheapest, but often the safest and the fastest,” Parikh said. “A lot of India’s bridges are old so there’s no point trying to take a heavy structure over the roads and risk ending up with a disaster.”

With time, Parikh would become a director of the firm and Lift & Shift would go on to service projects for major industrial clients including Godrej, Wärtsilä, MAN, Caterpillar, MRPL, Technip, EIL, Reliance and ARVOS. Its assignments became increasingly larger, longer and more complex.

In 2003, the company completed another memorable project which included a 102-meter long C2-C3 splitter. “We took all the cargo from India to Saudi Arabia – 2003 marked our first international voyage into the Gulf region, where we did a complete package,” Parikh said.

Moving Internationally

As if there wasn’t enough action in India, Lift & Shift embarked on international expansion in 2012, opening a joint venture company, Lift and Shift Engineering Middle East LLC, in Oman. As well as in-house engineering capability, the company boasted a fleet of dedicated SPMTs and the ability to service any of the Sultanate’s ports.

In 2021, Lift & Shift claimed a record when it handled a single module weighing more than 4,500 tonnes – once again, the heaviest single module fabricated in India at the time. Contracted by L&T’s Modular Fabrication division, Parikh and his team handled seven modules weighing a total of 23,500 tonnes for the NWIS Mumbai High North project. Five modules ranged from 3,000 tonnes to 4,400 tonnes in weight, while the smallest module weighed 685 tonnes.

The culmination of the project saw the movement of the final and heaviest module, likened to a “seven-story building.” Weighing 4,532 tonnes, the gigantic module was moved from the fabrication yard to the jetty in an operation that included a hairpin turn, with only limited space for the axles (which were 60 meters long and 30.5 meters wide). The module was transported from the yard to the jetty in two-and-a-half hours and rolled onto a barge within an hour.

Recognition followed and the company picked up a number of local and international awards, including a global industry award for ‘Overland Transport Provider of the Year’, while Parikh himself was awarded a ‘Young Entrepreneur of the Year’ prize. “For many years we were just continuously improving our records,” he recalls. “The first jacket we did was around 1,800 tonnes, then we did 2,500 tonnes, 3,500 tonnes, and it just kept expanding. I was hoping to break the 10,000-tonne barrier, but that’s been elusive so far.”

A Change of Direction

All good things must come to an end, as the proverb goes, and so it was for Lift & Shift. In March 2022, three of Mumbai’s biggest names in the industry announced they were coming together to form India’s largest heavy-lift and project logistics company in a deal worth a reported US$2 million.

J M Baxi, one of the country’s oldest shipping groups with a trading history of more than 100 years, acquired Lift & Shift from the Parikh family, along with the project cargo division of Allcargo Logistics, a major forwarder whose interest in projects had waxed and waned over the years.

The result was the formation of a new business, J M Baxi Heavy Private Limited. “There is an upsurge in capital expenditure [in India] and we are just beginning to see the cycle turn,” said Dhruv Kotak, J M Baxi’s managing director, at the time of the deal. “The next decade will see momentum in demand, bolstered by the national infrastructure pipeline.”

The transaction was something of a marriage of convenience for all concerned. The owners of Lift & Shift were ready to exit the sector and focus on their other business interests, which include real estate, hospitality and education; Allcargo was keen to dispose of assets for a vertical it no longer wanted to service; and J M Baxi seized the opportunity to strengthen its presence in the project cargo field.

And Parikh? He was appointed president and chief business officer of J M Baxi Heavy and gets to continue doing what he likes best – albeit at a (slightly) less intensive pace. “I used to arrive at the office at nine-thirty in the morning and leave around eight pm, and I was traveling more than 150 days a year,” he recalls. “Now I am traveling less, and I’ve started to work from home on a Saturday.”

Everything Is Possible

Parikh, a married father of two, was the only family member to transfer to the new heavy-lift business, along with many long-serving employees of Lift & Shift. “I’ve been passionately involved in this business since 1997, working from stage one. It gives satisfaction at the end of the day when you plan and execute something to the tee,” he says.

As well as managing a team of 400 employees at J M Baxi Heavy, Parikh maintains contact with key customers (“you have to make a point to meet clients regularly”) and, with all his hands-on industry experience, cuts the figure of a boss who is unlikely to entertain the words ‘Sorry sir, it can’t be done’. “That’s right – there’s nothing that’s impossible,” agrees Parikh. “It’s our job to find the way.”

The new entity has India’s largest fleet of special equipment for over-dimensional and heavy-lift projects, including over 660 trailers, of which more than 200 are SPMTs, and marine assets such as barges.

“With the new entity we are able to deliver everything from the smallest pieces to the largest, we have the entire vision now,” Parikh says. “Quality is of course important, but to offer the best rates you need to have the in-house strength too. The amalgamation helped us to be in various locations, giving us greater strength and a bigger portfolio and allowing us to deliver where you would have otherwise had to combine with other service providers, or break up the job. Our strategy is to be the first name that comes to mind when a logistics project in India comes up.”

Notwithstanding the consolidation instigated by J M Baxi, there is no shortage of competition in the sector. “In the 1990s, we were seven or eight companies. Today, there are more than 60 companies with hydraulic axles, so the competition hasn’t shrunk – but the market has expanded left, right and center.”

Reach for Goals

Having talked shop for more than an hour, I want to know about Parikh’s personal interests. “I get up around six-thirty and go for a walk, often for 45 minutes or more, listening to spiritual discourses,” he says. “I have a religious upbringing and would like to pass on this knowledge and belief to the younger generation. Since the age of 10, I have been reading the Hindu scriptures, in particular the Bhagavad Gita – the teachings of Shri Krishna – and turn to them to navigate the challenges faced by mankind, like birth, death, pain, suffering, fear, love and hate.

“I believe the purpose of one’s journey is to improve yourself and reach your goals. Do your work earnestly and you will get your results. It’s been a conscious effort to keep on performing, not just doing things for the sake of it.

“Outside work, reading is one of my hobbies and I hold the typical Indian love of cricket – both watching and playing. These days I follow soccer too, and I’m also interested in photography. We’ve enjoyed a lot of traveling over the years, and that’s where you get the family time.”

Asked what his future holds, it doesn’t take long for Parikh’s mind to revert to the business he’s devoted his life to. “Well, I’m still hoping to break that 10,000-tonne milestone and be among the few that have handled a project of that size,” he says. “It’s a target to achieve – for sure."

J M Baxi is an exhibitor at Breakbulk Europe and Breakbulk Middle East.

TOP PHOTO: Sameer Parikh. CREDIT: J M Baxi
SECOND: Lift & Shift claimed a record in 2021 when it handled a single module weighing more than 4,500 tonnes, the heaviest such module fabricated in India at the time, for the NWIS Mumbai High North Offshore Project. CREDIT: J M Baxi
THIRD: Sameer with his family. CREDIT: Sameer Parikh