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Blue Star Limited is India's largest central airconditioning company with an annual turnover of Rs 2800 crores, a network of 32 offices, 7 modern manufacturing facilities, over 2000 dealers and around 2500 employees.

It fulfils the airconditioning needs of a large number of corporate, commercial and residential customers and has also established leadership in the field of commercial refrigeration equipment ranging from water coolers to cold storages. The Company also offers comprehensive Electrical Contracting and Plumbing & Fire Fighting Services. Blue Star's other businesses include marketing and maintenance of hi-tech professional electronic and industrial products.

Blue Star has business alliances with world renowned technology leaders such as Rheem, USA; Hanbell, Taiwan; Hitachi, Japan; Midea, China; Information Security Systems, Thales, UK; E's Inc, Japan; Carel, Italy; GREE, China and many others, to offer superior products and solutions to customers.

The Company has manufacturing facilities at Thane, Dadra, Bharuch, Himachal, Wada and Ahmedabad which use state-of-the-art manufacturing equipment to ensure that the products have consistent quality and reliability.

Founder Chairman
In September 1943, with just two employees and two thousand rupees, he started Blue Star Engineering Company in the middle of World War II. He was then thirty years old, and armed only with confidence, charm and charisma. The one thing he possessed in abundance, however, was ambition. As he said, "For any growth to take place, there must be ambition. Without that desire, that drive, that obsession, you can do nothing." Unfettered by convention, Mohan Advani could discern opportunity where others saw difficulty. His spirit of enterprise and working innovatively around obstacles was the hallmark of many of his ventures. This, combined with his great capacity for hard work, was the formula for his many business successes. It was he who pioneered water cooler manufacturing in India, making Blue Star synonymous with water cooler and laying the foundation for it to become a manufacturing company. In 1946, he emptied the Company's bank account to travel to the US. He knew absolutely nobody there. Gifted with chutzpah and a flair for marketing, he returned with tie-ups in the fields of airconditioning and refrigeration. In the years to come, the several lucrative agencies that he negotiated for Blue Star brought the Company invaluable know-how and helped it burgeon. Although his health had already started to decline in the early 1970s, he took a keen personal interest when Blue Star was commissioned to aircondition the new skyscrapers that began to dot Bombay's skyline in that era.

History
Blue Star was founded in 1943, by Mohan T Advani, an entrepreneur of exemplary vision and drive. The Company began as a modest 3-member team engaged in reconditioning of airconditioners and refrigerators.

Within three years, the Company secured the agency for US-based Melchoir Armstrong Dessau's airconditioning equipment. Shortly after, the Company was selected by Worthington, the US leader in airconditioning, as its India based partner - these were the first of numerous foreign associations to follow.

An expanding Blue Star then ventured into the manufacture of ice candy machines and bottle coolers and also began the design and execution of central airconditioning projects. Then came the manufacture of water coolers. In 1949, the proprietorship company set its sights on bigger expansion, took on shareholders and became Blue Star Engineering Company Private Limited.

Ever since, there has been a constant and profitable growth. Blue Star diversified and took up agencies for Material Testing Machines and Business Machines. The export arena beckoned and the Company began exporting water coolers to Dubai, where in fact, 'Blue Star' soon became the generic name for water coolers.

The sixties and the early seventies witnessed Blue Star continuing to expand and thrive. A team of dedicated professionals aided Mohan T Advani in ever furthering his vision of a profitable company dedicated to its ideals of professionalism and success. Employee strength crossed the 1000 mark and the company went public in 1969 to become Blue Star Limited, as it continues to be called today.

In 1970, the Company took up the all-India distributorship of Hewlett-Packard products, a business relationship which continues today and has grown ever stronger through the years. As the Company's reputation for delivering the goods in the most challenging of airconditioning projects grew steadily, the early seventies saw a series of prestigious projects being entrusted to Blue Star - skyscrapers such as Air India Building, Express Towers, the Oberoi Hotel in Mumbai, apart from several others. Revenues touched the Rs. 10-crore mark and staff strength doubled to exceed 2000.

As its Indian presence reached greater heights, the Company began building determinedly upon its existing overseas presence, Blue Star set up a joint venture with Al Shirawi in Dubai and went on to execute some outstanding projects in Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. To complement its airconditioning projects and undertake turnkey industrial projects, an Industrial Division was set up in 1978.

Always moving with the times and ever on the lookout for business possibilities, Blue Star next set up a software export unit at Seepz, Mumbai in 1983. Then came associations with more global leaders - a collaboration with York International of USA for central airconditioning equipment and joint ventures with Motorola and Yokogawa.

In 1984, Ashok M Advani & Suneel M Advani, the sons of Mohan T Advani, took over the reins of the Company, after spending nearly 15 years within the Company steadily climbing up the ladder. A renewed thrust was placed on the company's core business areas - airconditioning and refrigeration and the distribution of professional electronics equipment - and the company emerged a market leader in these focus areas.

The nineties witnessed India entering an era of economic liberalisation and an upsurge in competition as the dynamic business scenario attracted the world's most forward-looking corporations. It was time to re-look at existing business competencies, re-engineer those that were obsolete and forge ahead in acquiring new business competencies. Blue Star was more than equal to the challenge and expansion continued unabated.

In keeping with this focus, an advanced manufacturing facility was set up at Dadra in 1997, in technical collaboration with Rheem, USA, to enhance manufacturing competency. Today it bears the distinction of being regarded as the best such plant India-wide. The dealer network was strengthened and expanded to bring products within easy reach of every customer.

With the advent of the much awaited new millennium in 2000, the action continued. The software unit was spun off into a separate company, Blue Star Infotech Ltd., the export of airconditioning products from the Dadra factory began and contract manufacturing for local and foreign brands commenced. A new Corporate Vision was developed - "To deliver a world-class customer experience". Every employee is determined to follow this vision and keep their organization a competitive and forward-looking one.

Blue Star crossed the Rs. 500 crore milestone in 2000 and the Rs. 600 crore milestone in 2002-03. With the boom in construction activity and increased infrastructure investments, the Company leveraged its leadership position to grow aggressively. In the following three years, the Company nearly doubled its turnover, clocking Rs 1178 crores in 2005-06.

Even more than size, Blue Star enjoys an enviable reputation as an ethical corporation, ever mindful of its obligations towards customers, shareholders, dealers, business partners, employees and the environment in which it operates.

In 2008, the Company ventured into the electrical contracting business, offering customers mechanical, electrical and plumbing (MEP) services. From a logistical and technological perspective, this move was facilitated by the company's acquisition of Bangalore-based Naseer Electricals Private Limited.

In 2010, the company strengthened its electro-mechanical projects business through the strategic acquisition of D S Gupta Construction Private Limited, the largest independent plumbing and fire fighting contracting company in India. This move fortified Blue Star's position, placing it amongst the country's leading companies in the MEP field.

In 2011, the Company forayed into the residential air-conditioning segment. The Company was witnessing a significant demand from the residential segment given the higher disposable income and the growing middle class who are upwardly mobile and seek comfort. Despite the fact that Blue Star room airconditioners were not available in retail channels, a significant amount of Blue Star's sales came from the residential segment, mainly from consumers who believe that a specialist is better than a generalist and a conviction that if Blue Star is a leader in cooling large spaces, its room airconditioners must be good. Considering the above, the Company thought it prudent to aggressively target the residential segment and leverage on the expertise in cooling that Blue Star has built over the years. The Company significantly altered its marketing mix to focus on the residential segment. On the product front, it launched a new contemporary and stylish range of split airconditioners to appeal to home consumers.