In an interaction with Industry Outlook, Ujas Khunt, Founder, Chemical Partners India, expounds on why enterprises are attentive towards discovery of new chemicals and optimization of the industry for the ultimate effect in terms of the sectors of residential, hospitality, commercial, healthcare, education, food and beverage and medicine & pharmaceutics for progressive development and abolishing the modern-day business scarecrows.
The global specialty chemicals market is expected to reach $882.6 billion by 2028. How do you anticipate the growth of the industrial and specialty chemical sector in India? What are the factors driving this growth?
The industrial and specialty chemical industry of India does not limit the growth of the chemical sector. What I see now is that the things we were importing were never thought of for manufacturing in India are being manufactured in India. The product manufacturing in 2021 was the previous-gen technology from Korea, Germany, and Chinese.
What I believe is, there will be exponential growth in the specialty chemicals manufacturing and market from India, because, in the last three to four years, there has been a lot of research and development.
New products and new formulations with new alternatives for already manufactured products by China and other countries are in continuation. This leads to growth and with government support in manufacturing of the high-hazardous APIs and cosmetic related products, growth increases.
How China has grown over the years in a particular field by allowing manufacturers to grow and subsizing certain pieces of machinery and technical production, the government-supported in having exponential growth in the next 10 years for specialty chemicals and industrial chemical seeds for India.
With the growth of the industrial chemical industry, transporting hazardous chemicals throughout India has become one of the most daunting problems. Furthermore, with the increasing demand, clients’ ongoing need for on-time delivery is becoming increasingly neglected. How do you see this issue from the Indian context? How can the problem be solved?
The chemical sector in India is governed by chemical goods and has been the biggest issue so far because of the unavailability of well-equipped vehicles and higher logistics costs.
The transport rates through road or water bodies are higher than in China and increase the economical cost of certain products.
However, with a connected transporting system, China has goods transportation at a very nominal price. We will need to invest in the Indian chemical sector for the improvement of the logistic teams.
Investment in the development of ports is also needed as when we are transporting certain goods from Uttar Pradesh or Bihar to the different ports of India, problem arises when some states do not have a proper ferry system.
The business world also asks questions about the quality of vehicles as the technicalities are not suited for transportation. So, there is a long way to go in terms of logistics comparing ourselves with Europe and China. The logistics in terms of manufacturing of certain products are beaten up in pricing, resulting in losing in logistics.
As per a recent market study, the Indian research and development sector is not paid much attention due to its high cost. The domestic manufacturers cannot afford the cost of bringing new products to the market therefore they go with the common products which require economic research and development investments. How do you propose to overcome this issue?
In the last two years, there has been absolutely little research and development completed than earlier. World businesses are setting up manufacturing plants in India. In recent times, there has been some investment in the field of research by some leading chemical companies and firms.
The focus should be in investing more into the research segment for an increase in growth and profit. When the business has a fixed margin of profit, with markets in Europe, manufacturing local goods, the investors get a good amount of money in return, through investments in patents registration.
The chemical industry faces a daunting shortage of skilled laborers which affects the productivity of the industry. Some of the many problems faced by the lack of skilled laborers are compromised product quality, more time to complete the task, hampering productivity, and limited growth. How can the existing workforce be upscaled to meet the changing market paradigm without causing any hindrance to the productivity of the firm?
Without causing any hindrance of an industry business production, there can be changes made in an existing workforce. Some of the companies are providing technical training to their workforce for increasing their productivity. The Chinese workforce is equal to six times the Indian workforce. For equivalent results and an increase in the workforce, rock-bottom studies with many practical approaches are being conducted.
The education curriculum should get more practical lessons than theoretical studies for growth. The chemical engineering sector should start training the laborers and workforce for optimum performance. Almost 80 percent of the engineers from India are incapable of getting out in the market.
They need to be trained for one or two years for launching startups. I see India beating China in 2030. In terms of cells, in terms of total production, and in terms of domestic consumption, and India will be importing very less in this particular segment.
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