Interview with Mr. Yogesh Agrawal

There is tremendous scope as far as the usage for both the products is concerned. For agrotextile market size is expected to cross Rs 743 crore by 2012. The projected growth in demand of geosynthetic as a whole is 12.3% a year to 100 million SQM by 2013, up from just 56 million SQM in 2008. Our of this approx. 37 million SQM of geotextiles were rolled out in 2008 and 65 million SQM are predicted for 2013 (and 113 million square metre in 2018).

We are currently working towards the use of woven agrotextiles and geotextiles in India. For the agrotextiles, we are working with different farmers for trials in the western as well as northern parts of India. As far as geotextiles are concerned, our focus is mainly on roads, airports and railways.

The biggest missing link in my opinion is the lack of awareness to the end users for the benefits and application method of different technical textiles. In some places, I have seen that people are well acquainted with the product but are still not ready to use the same. The reason for the same is unknown. In my suggestion, the policy makers need to get both, the manufacturers and the users, on the same forum to discuss the roadblocks faced by both the sides involved. This will probably help the policy makers take a faster decision to bridge the link between the supplier and the user. This initiative will see more investments coming in a very short span of time. This I say because for a vast population like India, the numbers of manufacturers are few and scope of use is endless.

Everybody we see around is talking of how India has been progressing and how we are getting recognized for consistent quality supplies. We can pull up this image of our country by getting latest technologies from multi national companies and working jointly with them to develop it in our country. This will not only benefit them in reducing their production costs by transferring production to our country but will be a win-win situation for both as we too will get better technologies which have already been proven for the past many years.