Est. 1933

Our Story

93 years is a long time to love a material. Everything we build today carries the weight of that obsession and the lightness only glass can give.

93

“We believe glass is the most honest material in architecture. It cannot lie about what it is. Neither can we.”

Nirmeet Kacheria, Founder, NUMAEX
NUMAEX Heritage
Who We Are

A Family Business
Built on Craft

NUMAEX traces its origin to 1933, when Mr. Chimanlal founded Chimanlal Chhotalal & Co. in Ahmedabad — a picture publishing house that commissioned artworks by leading Indian artists and built a distribution network reaching every major city in the country. One of those works — “Rama and Sita (Sri Ram Sita)”, in the Ravi Varma Press tradition — now sits in the Metropolitan Museum of Art collection in New York.

Glass entered the family story in the 1950s, when photo-frame glass and mirrors began arriving from Belgium. What began as a small detour from cultural commerce has become — three generations later — a family business measured in 250,000 customers, with 95%+ of them returning or referring.

1933

Founded

3rd

Generation

15+

Product Lines

Heritage

93 years, six chapters

1933

Foundation

A workshop. A beginning. Mr. Chimanlal founded Chimanlal Chhotalal & Co. in Ahmedabad as a picture publishing house of gods and goddesses, commissioning artworks by leading Indian artists and distributing them across the country. It was an act of cultural commerce, and of a man who understood that beauty has a market.

1964

Expansion

New hands, new possibilities. Glass and mirrors had entered the family story from Belgium; now the business built Ahmedabad's first vertical glass toughening plant and grew into wholesale glass trading across Gujarat.

1986 to 1992

Innovation

The second generation, Jeetendra and Haresh Kacheria, established the first glass processing facility in Ahmedabad. Etched glass using CAD design and a Roland plotter. Cupped glass through forming. Beveling and designer-edge machinery from the United States and Italy.

Archive · 1986 – 1993
pioneers in the glass industry — Kacheria family archive
pioneers in the glass industry — Kacheria family archive
pioneers in the glass industrySource: Agniforma Archival Records
2004

New technology enters

Ahmedabad's first horizontal fully automatic glass toughening plant and CNC processing equipment. A new chapter in manufacturing excellence, serving more than 250,000 customers with a repeat and referral rate above 95%.

2017

Agniforma

Nirmeet Kacheria, third generation, returned from Georgia Tech and four years in Atlanta to reimagine what the family business could become. Agniforma was founded; Shoji panels were crafted in aluminium, a pioneer in profile design; NUMA and SHOJI were established as luxury brands.

Today

NUMAEX

Crafted for architectural spaces. Over decades our craft expanded, blending traditional skill with evolving techniques. Today we create with purpose, where design meets precision and innovation serves experience.

The NUMAEX manifesto

A declaration of how we think, engineer and build.

01

Customer before everything

Every project begins by understanding people before products. We study how a system will be experienced, how it will perform over years of use, and how it will contribute to the architecture it becomes part of. Only then do engineering and manufacturing begin.

02

Quality is designed

Quality is never added at the end of production. It is established long before the first component is manufactured, through engineering standards, disciplined processes, validated components and uncompromising attention to detail.

03

Continuous innovation and validation

Innovation, product refinement, employee training and rigorous quality assurance are ongoing disciplines. An extensive in-house testing facility validates product performance before it reaches the customer.

04

Structural engineering beyond industry practice

Precision-engineered MS and stainless-steel structural inserts within aluminium profiles wherever structural loads demand it. This transfers stress away from the aluminium, significantly improving rigidity, dimensional stability and long-term performance.

05

Made in India, built for the world

World-class engineering can be conceived, developed and manufactured in India. Every NUMAEX system combines local craftsmanship with global engineering standards, for the finest architectural projects anywhere in the world.

06

Responsibility beyond delivery

A product leaving our factory does not mark the end of our responsibility. From engineering consultation and manufacturing to installation support and final performance, we remain accountable until every system functions exactly as intended.

Philosophy and legacy

Design is felt, long before it is seen.

Luxury, in its quietest form. Minimalism, layered with depth and detail. A legacy of craft, shaped for the present. Enduring performance, timeless in longevity.

Beauty in Balance

Where restraint meets refinement, and beauty endures through equilibrium.

Beauty in Balance is the art of restraint, where simplicity carries depth and harmony reveals its quiet power. An expression of luxury that speaks without excess.

Artistry in Essence

The purest form of craft, distilled into timeless elegance.

Artistry in Essence is the pursuit of purity in design. Every detail is considered, every proportion intentional, stripped of excess yet rich in meaning. It is the quiet expression of mastery, where beauty and function converge into a singular, timeless form.

Five core values

At the heart of NUMAEX lies a foundation built on core values. These principles guide us in creating products that blend functionality with artistry and craftsmanship, and in exceeding expectations to bring your visions to life.

  1. 01

    Love

    For the material, the work and the people it is made for.

  2. 02

    Trust

    Earned one project at a time, kept by doing what we said.

  3. 03

    Smartness

    Engineering that solves the problem before it reaches site.

  4. 04

    Customer Agency

    You decide. We make the choices clear and the outcome certain.

  5. 05

    Continuous Learning

    Every installation teaches the next one.

48K
The Workshop

Where Glass
Becomes NUMAEX.

A NUMAEX panel passes through dozens of hands before it ever reaches a site. Our 65,000 square-foot workshop in Ahmedabad holds every stage of the process under one roof — kiln, cutting line, edging, tempering, lamination, finishing, and inspection.

This is where three generations of obsession with the material become something you can stand inside.

65,000

Sq Ft Workshop

01

Tempering & Lamination

In-house toughening lines and EVA lamination chambers produce glass rated for structural and safety applications. When a project calls for glass that must carry weight or withstand impact, the numbers are engineered — not approximated.

02

Precision Cutting & Edging

CNC waterjet and diamond-wheel edging with tolerances measured in tenths of a millimetre. We cut, chamfer and polish every piece in-house — because the edge of a glass panel is the first place a flawed process shows itself.

03

Kiln-Formed Texturing

Our proprietary kiln process — refined across three generations — shapes glass at the molecular level, producing surfaces no rolling mill can replicate. Each Tactile panel carries the signature of the hand that guided it through the kiln.

04

Smooth Grit Blasting

The final ten percent of every NUMAEX panel is hand-finished to optical clarity. Machines can bring glass close. Craftspeople bring it all the way. Every surface that leaves our workshop has been inspected by eye, against raking light.

05

CNC Bending & Fabrication

Every commission is fabricated for its specific site. Nothing is pulled from a standard inventory. Channels, hinges, hardware, mullions — cut, milled and finished to the exact geometry of the room it will inhabit.

06

In-House Quality Control

Every panel is inspected at every stage — raw blank, post-temper, post-finish, pre-shipment. No exceptions, no sampling. A NUMAEX panel that reaches a site has already been looked at by a dozen pairs of trained eyes.

“A factory can make glass. A workshop makes NUMAEX. The difference is measured in the hours one is willing to spend on progress.”

The Engineering Team, Ahmedabad
“We believe luxury is experienced, not announced. It lives in the details, the materials, and the integrity of how things are made.”

From the foreword by Nirmeet Kacheria, Managing Director

The NUMAEX difference

Every remarkable project begins with a question. How do we create systems that architects can specify with complete confidence, and that clients can experience for decades? That question has guided every decision we have made, from design and engineering to materials, manufacturing, testing and installation.

Inside the NUMAEX factory
Ahmedabad65,000 sq ft

Before it becomes architecture, it becomes process. Engineering capability, manufacturing infrastructure, testing laboratories, digital systems and process control came first. The brand followed.

The Anatomy of Craft: profiles, presses and finished sections
The anatomy of craft

Craft is the accumulation of small decisions made well.

Every detail reflects a considered process, from material preparation to final assembly.

  1. 01Material preparation
  2. 02Shaping the profile
  3. 03Frame assembly
  4. 04Optical preparation
  5. 05Light calibration
  6. 06Precision bending
Philosophy

Silence, proportion, craft.

Shoji synchro sliding partition in a living room

Silence

The sound great engineering doesn't make

The finest engineering disappears. A door closes without sound. A pivot carries weight without effort. Every tolerance, every joint, every movement is refined until only the architecture remains, and silence becomes something you experience rather than notice.

Architectural aluminium profiles

Proportion

The math behind calm

Proportion determines how light is framed, how movement is guided, and how the body understands a room before the mind begins to analyse it. Reduced profile dimensions minimise visual interruption while internal structural chambers preserve rigidity across larger glazed spans.

Material samples and drawings on the studio table

Craft

Precision made visible

Precision is measured in fractions of a millimetre, yet experienced in the calm of a finished space. Hidden structural chambers create rigidity, while refined outer faces minimise visual presence. Thousands of millimetres. One architectural language.

Material and colour

Every colour tells a story.

Colour is never an afterthought. It shapes atmosphere, influences perception, and gives every space its own identity. From deep architectural blacks to warm metallic tones, natural wood grains and understated neutrals, every finish in the NUMAEX collection is curated to complement light, material and proportion.

PVDF aluminium · Extra clear glass · Oak veneer · Anodised · Powder coated

Finish samples on linen
The People

Who Makes NUMAEX

Portrait

Haresh & Nirmeet Kacheria

Directors

Fifty years of accumulated knowledge. Excitement born every day. NUMAEX builds architectural glass and doors for homes, hotels, and projects that take the long view. Five decades of work on the floor have taught us where doors fail, why glass disappoints, and what an owner notices in year three. We have spent that time building the version that does not. Pivot doors. Sliding partitions. Mirrors. Heavy doors. Each made the way we would specify it for our own house.

Portrait

Design Team

Product & Interiors

A team of product designers and engineers who understand that product is never just defined by its materials — it is aesthetics, performance, and experience simultaneously.

Portrait

Craft Team

Manufacturing & Quality

Artisans who have spent decades learning how glass responds to heat, pressure, and cutting — and who take enormous pride in precision that only they can see.

See the Work

Explore Our Projects

93 years of craft expressed across residential, hospitality, and commercial commissions.

View Projects
Work Together

Start a Conversation

Tell us about your project. Every NUMAEX engagement begins with listening.

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