r/ManufacturingInIndia

I have made an automation for my trader friend who could not exhaust his buylead quota given by Indiamart cause as soon as the leads refreshed, somebody was quick to pick it up .

Also he had to particularly hire someone to constantly refresh the tab and still missed out on most of the leads, making use of only 15% of the quota on good leads. I was able to make an automation customised to his specific needs and filters , which auto buys leads matching the criteria thus liminating the need for a human to sit and try beating the rigged first come first serve system,.

It has been working very well for him for a couple of months, as a result he has was constantly exhausting his quota on good leads mid-week itself, and proceeded to buy higher tier. He paid a portion of that amount to me too in exchange of building it.

Now that the system has been running for a couple of months, I wonder if anyone else also faces similar issues. I would love to see if I can customise and deploy it for other people who might need something like this.

I cannot stress this enough: if you are running a traditional manufacturing or trading business like me, please get AI and automation integrated into your workflow. It is no longer optional.

I am a manufacturer and trader. Last year, I made a massive investment to scale up our manufacturing capacity, fully expecting to cater to a flood of new customer queries. But as soon as the volume of enquiring  went up, we hit a massive, frustrating bottleneck.

Our sales team was simply not fast enough to respond to IndiaMart, Justdial, and website queries. If a lead came in after 7 PM or on Saturday evening (we work 5d/week)  it wouldn't get touched until Monday morning.

Because of our delayed replies, smaller traders with far inferior products were bagging deals that should have been ours, simply because they picked up the phone or replied first.

What I tried first (and why it failed)

My immediate reaction was to hire more sales guys. It didn't work. The  payroll costs shot up drastically, but the problem persisted because they were still not prompt enough to reply. On top of that, the new hires weren't technically qualified to understand our specialized manufacturing product. They couldn't explain the specs properly to high-intent buyers, and we lost even more deals due to poor communication.

Frustrated, I started asking around my business network. An acquaintance connected me with a sharp tech guy who an IIT alumnus who specializes in business automation.

We had a few calls where I laid out the mess. I don't understand the complex coding behind it, but he built a seamless system that fundamentally changed how we operate.

Here is exactly how the flow works now:

The moment an enquiry lands on IndiaMart the automation triggers an instant introductory message to the customer's WhatsApp. Along with the greeting, it automatically drops our digital product catalogue and a Google Maps location link to our facility.

The AI Layer: Later, I had him build a custom AI chatbot trained specifically on our catalogue and business FAQs. Now, when a lead clicks the link, they could actually chat with the AI to ask basic technical questions about our products in real-time.

The Results
Instead of chasing cold leads hours or days later, the dynamic completely shifted. Customers get immediate gratification. This system even made us appear bigger than we actually  are to the customer .We've even had a few clients walk straight into our manufacturing facility using the automated maps link without a single phone call being made.

The system also allows me to personally review the AI chat logs, see exactly what the customer needs, and jump in only on the highly relevant, high-value leads. The massive back-and-forth time is entirely gone.

The best part? I was able to scale down the salary overhead. I now have just one solid sales person managing the entire pipeline because the tech  does the heavy lifting of lead engagement.

Looking for suggestions
Now that I’ve seen what basic AI and automation can do for lead response, I want to take this further.

For those who have integrated tech into traditional businesses: Where else in this pipeline can I plug in AI? And what other operational bottlenecks (inventory, vendor follow-ups, invoicing) have you successfully solved using tech? Would love to hear your experiences.

My wife started her manufacturing business last month, and we're still figuring things out.

One thing we've noticed is that after sending the product catalogue, customers still end up asking almost everything over WhatsApp or on cal l, from pricing, specifications, to customization and delivery, etc.

The irritating part is that answering these questions ends up taking most of her day. We thought the catalogue would save time, but it feels like we spend more time explaining it than closing the order.

We're not sure if this is just part of the process or if we're doing something wrong.

Does this happen with everyone?

How do you manage it, and what's the biggest challenge you face after sharing your catalogue with a customer?

The 2026 Strait of Hormuz situation sent feedstock and virgin resin prices (PP, HDPE, etc.) sharply higher across India.

Many units are still feeling the impact on margins.

If your plant produces plastic lumps, purgings, or thick scrap from molding/extrusion, in-house recycling is one of the fastest ways to fight back.

Realistic example for a mid-sized operation generating 500 kg of PP lumps per day (very common):

Sell to traders or discard → ₹20-40/kg (or ₹0 + disposal cost)

Shred + reprocess in-house → effective cost of good regrind often ₹50-90/kg all-in (shredding + granulating + power + labor)

Current virgin PP/HDPE replacement cost → significantly higher (many grades seeing 30-80%+ jumps earlier this year)

Potential monthly material savings: ₹5–10+ lakhs (on 12–15 tonnes of recycled material).

Payback on a proper industrial shredder + granulator setup? Often 6–12 months for units running decent volumes.

The difference comes from using a heavy-duty shredder built for dense plastic lumps (high torque, proper screen, durable blades) instead of a light granulator that chokes or gives inconsistent output.

Quick questions for the group:

How many kg of lumps/scrap are you generating per day or shift?

What regrind percentage are you currently comfortable running?

Anyone already running in-house lump recycling — what kind of savings or challenges have you seen?

If you’re evaluating options and want specs on shredders designed specifically for tough Indian-factory lump conditions (or a quick custom savings projection for your volumes), just DM me.

Happy to share details or videos.

Save this post for your next capex or cost-reduction meeting — the math is hard to ignore when virgin prices stay volatile.