“… and miles to go”
JP Nair
Managing Director
Virtual Info Systems Pvt. Ltd
Geographically, India is a big market for the cleaning industry. However, the growth I have seen, is not what could have been achieved. There are many reasons for the same.
India needs more manufacturing units coming up, be it Indian or from international companies. So that, the best quality products and services can be made available to the Indian market.
The international companies should not look at India as a dumping ground. They need to invest time and money in understanding Indian climatic conditions, culture and come up with right solutions for India. Currently, only few companies have understood this need and are really working in this direction. India will be the future of the European cleaning companies.
Mindset change: Other than in some of the critical sectors like healthcare, pharma and food processing, cleanliness & hygiene is still wanting in most of the industries. Very often, it is not out of choice but out of compulsion that cleanliness & hygiene is being followed.
Our outlook towards cleanliness & hygiene should change. Understanding and following best practices is the need of the hour. I feel sad even today where we are talking about women power, we don’t find feminine hygiene bins in the washroom of companies with huge women workforce and whose turnover is over few hundred crores. At times, I wonder if we are ignorant or we just don’t care…
My message to the government is that just saying “Swachch Bharat’ or CLEAN INDIA is not going to make India clean. We need to first make cleaning economically viable. For this, the government has to decide whether we need to promote Make in India or we stick to importing. If we are looking at Make in India, we need to give Indian entrepreneurs and international companies certain benefits for setting up manufacturing plants here for cleaning equipment, tools, chemicals and hygiene solutions. If we want to rely on import, then we should give five year custom duty holiday which will ensure the prices come down by 30% and cleaning becomes affordable for everyone including our civic bodies.
On the other side, with various initiatives, the momentum has picked up. Many international players too are heading to India to tap the growing cleaning market. The cleaning industry is set for a boom time.
