Our storyMCMXCVIII — MMXXVIIndia
A workshop floor,
and what came of it.
Twenty-eight years from a single workshop in India to a house of eleven brands across seven sectors — written in our own words, in five eras.
Origin
Standfirst — the founding question, in one paragraph.
Hemco began in 1998 in a single workshop in India — stainless fabrication, refrigeration, and the people who made them. Every venture in the house today still traces back to a question that workshop asked of itself: how do you build the thing that powers the kitchen, instead of buying it from someone who builds it for everyone?
The answer is the rest of this page. Five eras, eleven brands, one through-line: the conviction that an industrial group is measured not by what it announces, but by what it still ships twenty years on. The works remain the spine; the rest of the house is what the works decided it needed.
“A house of industries is judged not by what it announces, but by what it still ships, twenty years on.”
HEMCO GROUP · OPERATING PHILOSOPHY
I
Era I · 1998 — 2008
The workshop floor.
Hemco opens in India as a stainless fabrication and refrigeration shop, building commercial kitchens for the country's hotels and restaurants. The first decade is about discipline at the metal — sheet stock to finished installation, under one roof, by people who could read a kitchen drawing and a service line equally well.
+ Hemco Kitchens established · 1998
II
Era II · 2008 — 2018
The works become a system.
Ten years of compounding. Cooking, refrigeration, extraction, and stainless fabrication move from line items to an integrated kitchen system, specified together. The works ship for hotels, cloud kitchens, bakeries and fine-dining restaurants across the subcontinent and start finding their first international homes.
+ Connected kitchen begins to take shape
III
Era III · 2018 — 2024
Design, intelligence, commerce.
The works gets a brand. Kerning Studio is set up to give the kitchen system a voice, then Kerning AI to keep the operations efficient, then Keystonne to take the catalogue national. The house stops being one company and starts being a system of companies, each making the others stronger.
+ Kerning Studio · Kerning AI · Keystonne
IV
Era IV · 2024 — 2026
Sovereign ventures begin.
Lumonn enters its first build phase — a Low Energy Nuclear Reactor module sized for distributed clean baseload. Consortium is chartered for decision intelligence inside Indian institutions; Cronuss Associates is set up as the in-house counsel for the group; CDR is incorporated for sovereign defence manufacturing. The frontier ventures all start the same year, on purpose.
+ Lumonn · Consortium · CDR · Cronuss
V
Era V · 2026 →
Eleven brands, seven sectors.
The house, today: a culinary works, a design atelier, an intelligence stack, a hospitality consultancy, a sovereign portfolio, a chambers practice, and a foundation. Twenty-eight years compounding — and still inside walking distance, mostly, of the workshop floor we started on.
+ MVV Foundation returns the practice to the city
“The works remain the spine. The rest of the house is what the works decided it needed.”
FROM THE FOUNDER'S NOTE
Operating principles
How the group works.
Five operating rules — written down once, applied across every brand in the house. They are not values; they are the working contract under which the house decides what to build, what to say, and what to ship.
- 01
Built in-house.
From the foundry to the software that runs it. If a capability is core to the business, we build it ourselves — we do not subcontract the things that compound.
- 02
Compounding.
Every brand in the house earns its keep by making the others stronger. Intelligence serves the works. Design serves commerce. Counsel serves them all. Nothing in the portfolio is an island.
- 03
India first.
We begin with the problems closest to home. The ones we solve well are the ones that travel — to the EU, to the UK, to the Gulf, to the institutions that buy what India is now ready to ship.
- 04
Long horizons.
We invest in decades, not quarters. Most of our brands are still inside walking distance of the original works, and the team that runs them measures success in years that begin with two.
- 05
Quiet ambition.
Brand and craft, in equal measure. We say less than we make and make more than we say. Press follows delivery — never the other way around.
Coda
We return what we've learned to the city that taught us.
The MVV Foundation is the philanthropic arm of the group — culinary skilling for cooks from underserved communities, scholarship support and school partnerships in the towns where Hemco operates, and community kitchens designed and supplied at cost by the works.