Dr. Raman Ramachandran

Head South Asia, Chairman & Managing Director

BASF India Ltd

“India’s ability to manufacture complex agro-chemicals and pharmaceuticals, cost effectively, has already established it as a serious contender in specialty chemicals space. To become the next major manufacturing hub for specialty chemicals, India needs to leverage the power of Industry 4.0 via digitalization and embrace sustainable manufacturing practices. The industry also needs to focus on Research and Innovation as a differentiator. A marriage of world class Indian academic talent with abundant entrepreneurial spirit can prove to be a potent combination. I am looking forward to the Speciality Chemicals World Expo 2019 conference where these important topics will be deliberated.”

Mr. Vipul Shah

COO, Petrochemical Division, Reliance Industries Ltd &

Chairman, Specialty Chemicals World Expo 2015

The ‘Make in India’ initiative has made it obvious that you need to be very clear about what you need to make in India because unless you create a very competitive advantage, the business will not be sustainable. As seen in the Jurong Island cluster development, just because your raw material position is not there, you can still create a model where you can make it successfully available. India too faces similar challenges and issues as we do not have cost effective raw materials. Many of our industry create tertiary and secondary jobs in huge numbers. If one cluster can create a sizable amount of employment and that really churns the economy. The second aspect from the specialty chemical stand point is innovating in India because we need to find bottom of the pyramid solutions. I think the country needs to find solutions for cost conscious buyers.

Mr. Nadir Godrej

Managing Director

Godrej Industries Ltd

No matter what the want or need, With Chemistry we can succeed. And other sectors can’t survive, If our industry doesn’t thrive. To manufacture in our nation, We need a chemical foundation. And specialties have a special role.Solving problems is their goal. And other industries can only grow, If they in turn successfully show. That their customers will see a gain Or else avoid inflicting pain.

Dr. Deepak Parikh

Vice Chairman & Managing Director, Clariant Chemicals (India) Ltd &

Vice Chairman – Specialty Chemicals World Expo 2017

Sustainability is very very vital for the industry and for the companies to practice and also that is the way to the future and it’s not just a buzz word.

Dr. Swaminathan Sivaram

Honorary Professor & INSA Senior Scientist

Indian Institute of Science Education & Research

Innovations require understanding the future constraints of the consumers that we will serve. It is always easy to innovate for a society which has high purchasing power relatively it is very difficult to do so for a community society that belongs to the lower rungs of the economic ladder.

Mr. Prakash Raman

Practice Head - Chemical Energy &

SCM TATA Strategic Management Group

The contribution of manufacturing to the GDP has been hovering around close to 15-16 percent. But the effect of overall manufacturing GDP can be much higher. For example, it has the capability to grow at around 12 to 14 per cent and when the GDP wanted to grow at around 8 per cent, it has a lot of positive impact and created almost 100 million jobs by 2025. Now, the government has the vision to enhance the manufacturing up to 25 per cent of the GDP by 2025. The chemical industry does not have any kind of constraints. 100 per cent FDA is being allowed. There are only a few sectors which have this kind of liberty. But we have still not grown to the level of our potential. We constitute only 3 percent of the global market whereas China constitutes for 31 percent.

Mr. Frank Lelek

President

Evonik India

As a result of interacting with other companies in the last three years, I have made an interesting observation that we have hundred per cent FDI in chemicals. But somehow it has not picked up to the extent all of us and the government had expected. There are still a lot of challenges and though India is a promising market, there are also a lot of difficulties and it is complicated. The government is still taking steps to come up with ways and means to simplify this process.

Mr. Sudhir Shenoy

CEO

Dow India - Innovating in India

The only way to ensure ‘Make in India’ achieves its goal is if you can integrate that with the ability to innovate, in India and for India. The challenge in India today is that for specialty chemicals in India, there is not enough critical mass. The reason why we do not have any critical mass is that we have not been able to develop enough applications that touch millions of people that are at the bottom of the pyramid.

Dr. Arun Dravid

Chairman Emeritus

Jacobs Engineering India Pvt Ltd – EPC Services

My focus is going to be on the EPC side of the specialty chemicals business, I would like to quickly divide this into two sectors. I would like to draw attention to the administrative and planning, policy type of hurdles and challenges that we have faced in the past and will perhaps face in the future. The custom’s structure is going to change in the future with the new budget coming in place. If raw material duty is reduced and finished product duty is increased, as is being planned, this will create a disincentive for large scale dumping into countries like India because the import duty will be prohibitively high.

Dr. Vivek V Ranade

Deputy Director and Chair,

NCL - Magic for fine and specialty chemicals

Magic here stands for Modular, Agile, Intensified and Continuous. This ‘Make in India’ is an opportunity for fine and specialty chemicals in India, not just to follow the best practices of the developed world but possibly lead some of those practices. We really want Make in India to be successful, it is important to embrace magic concepts. This is an opportunity to really lead manufacturing in fine and specialty chemical industries.

Dr. Sudhir Nambiar

Senior VP and Head,

API - R&D, Dr Reddy’s

With increase in population, the growth of the middle class is imminent and almost 100 million people will be added in the next few years. This means that the buying power will increase and both the agro and pharma side are going to see the benefits. There are significant shifts and new trends are emerging, consumers are getting more demanding – both in the area of pharma and agro chemicals. There are also a few challenges in India; one is related to IPR, significant barriers for the growth of multinational companies and local pharma companies. Price control is yet another issue in terms of agro-chem industry.
We have done well in the generic space, in terms of discovery we have been abysmally poor. We have an increasing number of deaths due to tropical diseases but not many medicines are discovered to tackle this problem.

Dr. Arup Basu

President – New Businesses and Innovation Centre

Tata Chemicals Ltd

In the meetings regarding the ‘Make in India’ campaign held at Delhi in December, out of the pointers listed for chemical industry under the short term initiatives, one was related to issuing feedstock mandate to all anchor units, to provide petrochemical units to downstream industry, comprehensive clearance framework and safety.
One of the challenges in the cluster space is that if you have high value products then you need to verify if the freight component significantly impacts the setup location and proceed accordingly.

Mr. Amit Chaturvedi

Sr Vice President & Head-Cracker Business

Reliance Industries Limited (RIL)

In India, particularly in the Ahmedabad zone, many petrochemical industries have developed and grown over a period of time. Reliance has a plan in Hazira port, Dahej port and Baroda we are trying to play our role in making available a host of basic molecules that find application in various other chemical industries. One of the basic reasons for the growth and development of our chemical industry is the availability of port infrastructure which makes it easy to bring in molecules and other requirements as and when necessary. Another plus point is the availability of stable power and the road and transportation infrastructure which further promotes the healthy growth of the industry in the ‘Baroda zone’ for Reliance.

Mr. Tobias Groschang

Head of Operations

Evonik Methionine SEA Pte Ltd

From toothpaste to the absorbent material in diapers to amino acids used to enhance the nutritive value of poultry food, Evonick has a role to play in many other products as well. We have in place certain criteria for the site selection process to find the right location to build our plant for the production of Methionine. Taking into account the economy of the country, stringency of IPR laws and regulations, the political stability and the influence of politics on the laws, by-laws and policies, we set up a system that helps us set up the new plant, train personnel with an aim to make headway in the market.

Mr. Sanjay Trivedi

CMD

Trivedi Groupe

India is a emerging market for value added sustainable products for a price conscious middle income group consumer. Innovative solutions for laundry products which save effort, energy , water and minimise use of plastics will be a step forward in this direction. Members of the Indian Home and Personal Industry Association are working together towards this intent with support from raw material manufacturers, academia and makers of water-soluble film suppliers. These efforts should double the per capita consumption of home care products in next 5 years.