Environmentalist Sarika Thigale: Taking India to the World!

“Just get it out of your head that manufacturing is a male-dominated field; if you are talented, raise your talents, raise your efficiency to a level that you dominate the field”

Sarika utters for women what she did and proved herself. Sarika Thigale, the unassuming first-generation entrepreneur, co-founder and Director of Saka Engineering Systems Private Limited prefers parity to privilege. Born in a small town in India with a passion to pave her own path, Sarika is now taking India to the world. Saka Engineering is one of the leading companies in the domain of Industrial Drying and Evaporation Systems offering a wide range of spray drying systems including Spray Dryers, Fluidized Bed dryers, Vacuum Dryers, Flash Dryers and Conduction Dryers.

Sarika hails from a small town Bhainsa in the Nirmal district of Telangana where she finished her schooling. Passionate about protecting the environment since her childhood she pursued her dream and joined Swami Ramanand Teerth Marathwada University in Nanded Maharashtra where she earned a postgraduate degree in Environmental Science in 1999.  

After her marriage, she came to Pune but never called it a day for her pursuits in her career. She enrolled for an MBA in Human Resources Management and Services at Symbiosis, Pune which she completed in 2006. Apparently, Sarika was an independent and empowered human being, managing well her family and a corporate job she bagged after her MBA. But something deep inside her was nudging her with a sense of incompletion; the environmentalist in her was not satisfied.

She wanted to better deal with pollution control and that too with innovative ideas. “Pollution control was my area of interest such as zero liquid discharge and effluent treatment etc.,” she says.  It was not too long before Sarika quit the cosy corporate job and found ample support from her husband who himself was a Mechanical Engineer working in an industrial equipment manufacturing company.

Together with Mr. Anand Thigale, she founded Saka Engineering in the year 2009 with the objective of the company to manufacture industrial process equipment for controlling air pollution. Today the company is one of the leading organizations in the field of Industrial Drying and Evaporation Systems with its market leadership in India and fast growth in even offshore markets from Europe to Northern Africa to Southeast Asia. 

Sarika has been a pillar of strength in Saka Engineering with her unflinching leadership role. “Initially I used to handle purchases, manufacturing, and marketing. Today I mostly look after the finances of the company, as well as costing and dispatches,” she says. Meanwhile, she has developed a strong team where individuals have risen from strength to strength.  

Sarika Thigale is a staunch supporter of woman empowerment by practice. Today Saka Engineering has a 50% female workforce. “Women tend to stay with an association,” she says. “They are polite and approachable, have more empathy, and are better at team management. Women come with their own set of strengths. We strategically deploy women in various departments,” she says. 

“Some of the women started as trainees and over a period of 13 years they have been promoted to managers, general managers and even to directors. That kind of value addition they make to the company,” proudly says Sarika.  

As a woman, did she ever feel intimidated on the shop floor among male workers? “No,” she laughs. “After all, it’s my company.” She adds, “These are technical people, supportive people. The only challenge was time management.” 

However, Sarika planned it well for her women workers to not feel time management issues, being mindful of the fact that women have to make more compromises be it refusing good job opportunities or relocating for their family commitment.  To make things easier for female workers, she lets them work at a convenient time that suits them splendidly. In the same spirit, she motivates her women team members to not be intimidated by any preconceived notion of male domination. “One of my woman managers was shying away from having an older male assistant manager to support her in fear whether she would be considered seriously. I allayed her fear and made her understand her commanding role,” she says. 

Sarika, however, also believes that women are getting more privileges than ever before. “There have been women who even had to struggle hard to learn the alphabet but they never complained rather made inspiring platforms for today’s women to make it bigger in life as they have more opportunities and scope,” she says.  Despite that, she thinks that some women quietly endure prejudices instead of retorting. “You need a women’s grievance cell in every organization, even if it is a small SME,” she says. “Women have to speak up.” 

Sarika Thigale is leading India’s manufacturing brigade with a penchant for developing innovative products that protect the environment, giving not only import substitute options to Indian manufacturers. She thinks that women should also come out of their preconceived notions about manufacturing as opportunities are already there for women, and there’s no one stopping women from grabbing them. “It’s time to stop clamour for equity, it’s there for you. The only thing is are you ready for it?” utters Sarika, the trailblazer, for women to think and decide for themselves.

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