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Combating COVID-19 With
Effective Change Management
How has your company been able to keep pace with
changing times particularly with respect to market trends
and technologies?
Caprihans has two fullfledged government approved R&D
Centres. Our focus is to keep innovating everything what
we do. Most importantly, trying to understand the customer
needs. An important area has been to develop products
which are being imported. This provides ready-made
opportunities for faster commercialisation due to import
substitution. We have been focussing to make
international quality products, at local cost with Indian
ethos.
What is your company’s contribution to the Healthcare
Industry towards COVID-19 management?
We believe we have developed products which are unique.
Each product type and variant is attempted to make
invaluable lives, safe. Corona virus is a deadly
submicroscopic infectious agent, creating havoc. Our
products are structured to prevent both virus and blood
penetration, or are anti-microbial and anti-bacterial.
Which means, they are either very safe to use (say, the
PPE suits) or would not let the deadly virus to sit on the
product (say, the hospital curtains). Each of these
products should be of significant importance to the
healthcare segment.
Like most of the industry in India, your company might
also have passed through difficulties during the pandemic
lockdown and post lockdown opening periods.
Can you please share your experience?
Our manufacturing locations have gone through every
possible difficulties which most industries would have
faced. Starting from statutory limitation to the use of
maximum labour force to keeping strict social distancing
in the work place. The factory in Thane had the problem of
transporting the employees from their homes, while the
Mumbai local trains are not functioning. Staggering work
hours, intermittent holidays, arranging transport for
picking up and dropping employees, strict sanitation
practices, continuous facility sanitization, checking
every employee multiple times, are some of the new stuffs
we introduced. With divine intervention, we did not have
the additional challenge of migrating labour, as our
employees are mostly local
inhabitants.
According to you, what are the lessons for the industry
from the COVID-19 experience?
When I saw the sad pictures of migrant labours walking
hundreds of miles towards their homes as soon as the lock
downs were announced, it dawned on to me that businesses
should have the resilience to face serious workplace
distortions for atleast three months. It means that the
businesses should have funding firepower to meet
exigencies for atleast a quarter, should anything adverse
happen. The migrant crisis essentially emerged, when they
found they would not be paid or looked after by their
employers as the businesses are shut due to the pandemic.
This perhaps could have been avoided had the businesses
planned for the worse.
My key learning is therefore to have three months’ cash
burn, as ones cash balance.
What should be the “new normal” for the industry?
As regards the ‘new normal’, maintaining social distance
and continual sanitization in workplace, together with
hygienic habits like intermittent washing hands in soap
water, will be here to stay for some time. Most people are
not going to risk their lives by packing themselves like
sardines either in transport or in work space. The virus
in my view has changed for ever, the importance of health
over wealth.
In the long term, how do you see the future growth
prospects for Healthcare & Medical Plastics Sector –both
for domesti and export markets?
I foresee healthcare sector as a huge opportunity for the
Indian businesses. Especially in the sector of ‘nutrition’
and ‘immunity’ building. Health is now the wealth, and not
the other way round. India has huge treasure of ayurvedic
solutions for both nutrition and immunity building. A few
examples are turmeric, tulsi, neem. Just to name a few.
Being Indian in origin, we should be able to build a
global business around it. However, there needs to be an
appropriate credible quality certification ecosystem
created with government sponsorship.
At the personal level, what is your advice to the
plastic industry professionals for developing careers in
the Medical Plastics Sector?
Even if plastics is often denoted as a bad word, the
mankind cannot do away with it. Plastics was invented to
protect nature - to save wood, ivory and rare metals. The
medical world needs packaging that are safe and
food-grade. As of now, no known substitute is available
for plastics, barring the use of glass in certain sectors.
I believe there is great opportunity in the medical
plastics sector, especially in the areas of biodegradable,
recyclable and sustainable plastics.
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