About / People
People
The people behind Rhino
A management team of engineers and specialists, about 100 people across design, production, projects, site service, purchase and stores, accounts, quality and administration.
Leadership and management team
Who leads the work
| Name | Role | Responsibility |
|---|---|---|
| Shri R.C. Kothari | Founder | Started the foundry projects and consulting business in 1983; around 50 years in foundry production, projects and equipment |
| Manish Kothari | Chairman and Managing Director | Technical and business operations, innovation and ecosystem work |
| Rashmi Kothari | Director and Finance Head | Finance, bookkeeping and administration since 2000 |
| Ashit Desai | Operations Head | Overall operations and production process |
| Rajnikant Paghadar | R&D Head | Product and process development, R&D and management systems |
| Gajendra Prasad | Project and Sales Manager | Customer relations, projects, marketing and engineering coordination |
| Devanshu Patel | Production Manager | Production planning and control |
| Krutik Mewada | Design Head | Design, drawing and product development |
| Amit Mistry | Electrical and Administration | Electrical drawings, commercial administration and coordination |
| Chintan Patel | Automation Head | Automation and programming |
| Hitesh Dudhaiya | Project and Sales Manager | Project installation and servicing |
| Himanshu Trivedi | Administration | Administration and dispatch |
Manish Kothari
A journey from the shop floor to the UN
Manish Kothari’s purpose is to engineer, design and incubate solutions that address community problems.
- Early yearsGrew up in the business: in the Rhino office as a teenager and on the shop floor soon after.
- 1991BE in Mechanical Engineering from MS University, Baroda, with two gold medals. Six months at L&T, Hazira, then joins Rhino in October 1991, when it is incepted as a proprietary company.
- 1994 to 1996Builds the partnership with Fondarc, France, and leads the move to Rhino’s own works. Rhino becomes a private limited company on 8 April 1996.
- 2009Takes full responsibility for Rhino as MultiflexFM is prototyped and office and factory are merged.
- 2013Brings sand reclamation into the business and writes the Sustainable Development Goals into its values.
- 2015Joins UN programmes; Meemansa begins.
- 2017Mentor in UNIDO’s Global Cleantech Innovation Programme; honoured as Young and Dynamic Entrepreneur by the Institute of Indian Foundrymen.
- 2018Completes the International Empretec Training Workshop (ETW14) in November. Presents the paper “Why Choose Swiss Style Apprenticeship Training: An Indian Institute’s Perspective” for the Anwesha Composite Education Foundation, with Rhino as industry partner, at the International VPET Congress in Winterthur, Switzerland, on 8 June (Technical Workshop 6).
- 2020Duraprot protective masks developed with IIT Bombay in 30 days; SPB business model built.
- TodayChairs the management committee of a government Industrial Training Institute, and represents the foundry industry at the Institute of Indian Foundrymen and the Confederation of Indian Industry.
Initiatives supported by Rhino
Ideas put to work beyond machines
Besides the foundry machine business, Rhino supports community-minded initiatives that put the same ideas to work.
Meemansa
Two product lines: garments, promoted in 2015, and Silica Plastic Block (SPB) from 2023. Promoted with Priyanka Bapna as partner. Makes Duraprot masks and upcycled products, and runs the Meemansa SPB site for Silica Plastic Block products. An upcycling website, circleupmeemansa.in, is planned.
Anwesha Foundation
Non-profit vocational training on the Swiss model, registered in 2014 (earlier called ACE Foundation), running the Skills Development Institutes with SkillSonics since 2014.