Interview with Sanjay Raut

With the extended lockdown due to covid-19 in place over the past two months, the overall demand of technical textiles is muted in line with many other sectors. However, as things get to normalise, we should see demand uptick especially for segments like meditech, agrotech, Geotech and buildtech. With the covid-19 expected to remain, we would see lot many changes in our normal lifestyle. And herein, technical textiles with innovative properties would be preferred vs plain textiles.

The post-covid situation will be a new normal. covid-19 has and will bring about many changes in our lifestyle, the way we work and do business. For example, the focus on safety and hygiene will be intense and this will aid in the growth of meditech. Infrastructure development will take precedence leading to growth in Geotech and buildtech. With need for healthy food and focus by the government on fisheries and protected cultivation, we should see growth in agrotech.

Innovation is key for technical textiles to grow. While there have been innovations, the appetite to consume these innovative products had been low. We would now see the adoption of many differentiated products. For e.g. antibacterial bedsheets. Similarly, anticovid coatings could be developed with a wide variety of applications.

At Garware, our focus is and will be on delivering innovative application focused solutions. Our R&D team along with the sales teams work in conjunction with our customers to understand their business, pain areas and thereof solutions to alleviate the same. We work on both technology as well as product innovations. The technology innovations can be used across a variety of application-based products. Our mission to "Provide innovative application focused products to enhance the value of our customers" has been the key driving force of everything we do at Garware. This holds true more for our R&D team and staying true to this path has led us to many innovation gains and increased acceptance of our differentiated products by our customers.