Innovative & Technically Advanced Safety Products are Still Missing from the Portfolios of Indian Industry

Rajan Nigam, Managing director, Lifegear discusses about his organisation’s key and innovative safety products for the industry in India, reveals his views on the safety scenario in India as compared to developed nations, the challenges they face in the Indian market, their strategy to increase awareness about safety products and their usage in India and his plans to tap the vast SME segment in India.

Interviewed by Adeesh Sharma

1. Please introduce your organization and let us know about your key and innovative safety products for the industry in India?

Lifegear is a design and manufacturing specialist in the field of Rescue, industrial fall protection equipment & engineering Lifeline. Our Range includes -Basic to Advanced various full body harness, ascend, descend and rescue kits, confined space entry and retrieval kits, retractable fall arresters, permanent/temporary, horizontal/vertical lifelines and many more.

We are a company which promotes innovation & distributes a wide range of patented products, EN Certified, UIAA Certified, ANSI certified and NFPA Certified Products. Patent & NFPA is a very unique thing that majorly our company is providing.

2. How would you compare the safety scenario in India as compared to the developed nations and more specifically, the challenges you face in the Indian market?

India is a developing country & safety is the fastest growing market. There is a lot of work which is being done by many companies in India to spread safety awareness at different levels. But still, there is a lot of work that needs to be done. We see that innovative & technically advanced products are still missing from the portfolios of Indian Industry. Getting a technology in india is one task but implementing that technology on ground level is a big challenge. We can see the private industries are coming up faster than government sectors because government has a very old way of tendering system. However, in private companies there is a scope that we can definitely be technically more advanced as scenarios change. As a responsible company in India we play a very major role to place this highly advanced technical stuff in front of buyers of India & convince them strongly to use technology. We have come up with very interesting models. The challenges we face is again only considering the price factor over technical factors, which the industry is facing the heat of.

3. What is your strategy to increase awareness about safety products and their usage in India?

We understand there is huge gap between actual applications & the onsite requirement. To bridge this gap we have created a sister concern organization as well as India’s “First Safety Experience centre” for the industry people to come and see the world’s best practices. Our sister concern company “Pentasafe” is a training organization which helps people to actually understand the application of products via hands on experiences at our facility. We invite people to our Safety Experience centre to spend some quality time with us, to interact with our technicians as well as to see practical applications where people get to know very interesting facts: what they use to do or implement & how they can improvise the industry. This way we spread awareness about safety products.

We have even created a social media team, through which we try our best to spread awareness, communicate people on a wider platform, provide information on our new launches, etc. through Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn.

4. How do you plan to tap the vast SME segment in India?

This is one of the most challenging tasks because India is a big country with lot of people spread across cities, remote villages & towns. We try our level best but to match the new technology & price to the people is difficult. We try our best to participate in shows like OSH India, providing channel partners to reach these SMEs. We hope that via these exhibitions, through social media platforms and through continuous effort by practical site demonstration over our Safety Experience Centre, we might be able to bring a change in the views of people. However, it remains a long term process.