We are trying to give enhanced protection and safety to our workers so that we give them a chance to save their lives through our technology
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Shreesh Nadgouda, Region Sales Manager- India and South Asia, Blackline Safety talks about his organisation and its interests in the Indian Safety market, products they have launched in India, industries they are reaching out to with their products, challenges they have observed with the implementation of safety products in the Indian industry and how they compare to western markets.
Interviewed by Adeesh Sharma
1. Please tell us about your organization and its business interests in Indian safety market.
Blackline Safety is Calgary, Canada-based MNC and is ratedas one of the top Innovative and technological driven safety company in the world. Blackline Safety prides itself as a Global Connected Safety Technology Company to create, manufacture and manage portfolio of Gas Detectors, Area Monitors, and Lone Worker devices, all in-house. The sole intent of these devices is to ensure Complete Safety of the Industrial Worker, working in Hazardous conditions, such that, he can be located, contacted, and retrieved in case of an emergency… and that too in a matter of minutes. Blackline devices just don’t beep & flash, it is a complete Connected Safety Package that builds worker confidence that, he will return home safely.
As an Innovator of Connected Safety Devices, Blackline Safety’s endeavor is to bring to the Indian Industry.
- State of the Art Connected Safety Devices, primarily Lone Worker devices, Single and Multi-Gas Detector Equipment and Area monitors which will revolutionize the way, Customers perceive Safety Devices. The future of Safety will certainly be IoT-based Connected Devices and Blackline, as an innovator in this space, is proud to bring these connected Safety features In India as well. India will soon see the benefits of moving into Connected Safety workspace.
- The Portable Gas Detection space has been stagnated with little innovations over the past two decades. Blackline will Bring into India these much-awaited innovations in Connected Safety space, that the industry is so much looking forward to.
- Give the added confidence to the Indian Safety Manager that, finally a device that works along-with him to ensure complete safety of his workplace members. Connected Safety will make his task much easier and efficient in deployment of rescue services.
These connected devices, coupled with our safety software, data analytics and reporting, risk mitigation and operational efficiency, allow us to pivot and adapt quickly to changing market needs.
2. What sort of products do you have for the Indian industries that ensure safety for the workforce?
Blackline Safety truly believes that its the Rescue of the worker, we will strive for, not just his recovery. This means getting out the worker Safe and Alive rather than recovering his body, in case of an unfortunate accident. Blackline’s connected safety solutions include a network of cloud-connected devices, including Lone Worker Devices, Single and Multi-Gas Detection Wearable Devices & Area Monitors that, when coupled with our online Blackline Live dashboard, deliver real-time visibility into the safety status and location of your workers. Insights gathered from Blackline Analytics can be used to take proactive steps to improve safety, enhance performance and to manage compliance
Blackline Safety’s G7 wearables are changing the game in the industry – offering the huge advantage of instant, real-time connectivity which allows you to locate any team member, in any location, at any time using GPS or cellular connectivity. Add features such as two-way voice communications - and your workers have a solid lifeline that automatically connects to the cloud, without the need for Wi-Fi or network set-up to start doing its jobv.
Indian Industry is going to see a revolutionary change with the concept of Connected Safety and Blackline Safety will be eager to bring these to the Indian customer.
Which industry verticals are targeting through your products?
While Connected Safety is going to be the future of Safety Industry of every vertical in the coming years, Blackline has already achieved rapid success in many key accounts. Needless to say, Oil & Gas, Energy , Metal & Utilities Is where we will keep our initial focus on and then branch out to the other verticals in the coming years. But the fact of the matter remains that in the coming years, our Indian safety industry is rapidly moving towards digitalisation, and we will be talking Connected safety in all verticals in the years to come. Blackline Safety will have the clear first mover’s advantage in this field and laying a strong emphasis on innovation, we will only innovate advanced products specifically designed for the needs of a particular vertical.
4. What sort of challenges have you observed being faced by the industry with regards to gas detection and the associated hazards?
I would like to tweak the question little because we are not just a gas detection company. So just to give you an example, normal gas detection products just beep flash and give you an alert to move into a safe working area, whereas we are in connected safety space where we not only do all these things of beeping, flashing, alerting the person, but also give you a live alert to the computer or mobile of the supervisor, wherever they are located.
Be it across the globe, he could be on his laptop, he could be on his in the control room.
It could be in India, it could be outside India, it could be across the plants, or it could be across different sites of the same plant.
So that way you know there's an alert of a gas leakage.
We’re trying to create a new market, wherein we go beyond just gas detection and since we are going big on digitalization and connected safety, due to the hardware and the system requirements the price point is always a concern.
If I put it in comparative terms, we are trying to bring something similar to the Electric Vehicles vs Internal Combustion Engine car debate in the gas detection safety field.
We are trying to give enhanced protection and safety to our workers so that we give them a chance to save their lives through our technology.
You're giving an alarm not only to the person, but also to your rescue team to come and help and save you. So we can actually track you down within 5 minutes.
However, you need to a premium for quality service and this is the biggest challenge we face, in trying to convince our customers who find our pricing a little different and difficult to comprehend.
We have to convince our customers with the process being explained, the advantages being clearly laid down and you know then people have to start absorbing the change, this is where the future is.
But yes, it's a slow moving process in terms of the sales cycle.
The second challenge is related to mindset change.
We need to make people understand that investing in technology will make your people safer and the investment right now will start giving benefits in the next 1-2 years. Moreover, if your worker who gets impacted is the sole bread owner then there are four or five people family members whose lives get destroyed. My device not only works for gas detection but also doubles up as a mobile phone, which can be used as a walkie talkie, it can be used as a SMS device as well. All those features are there, so if I’m able to save his life, I have saved the entire family.
We are world leaders in this technology right now.
5. I would like to do a comparison with the Western markets, how much willing are people to pay the premium that you just mentioned as compared to industries in the Indian markets?
Generally speaking, the willingness to pay a premium is still very less right now and on top of that we are talking of going for more advanced safety products.
Blackline came into gas detection around 7-8 years back and the company's just 15 years old but 7-8 years back when we started, we saw a certain shift and huge acceptance of the industry wanting to move into digitalization and connected safety.
We are the only company in the world who's growing at around 30% year on year for the last seven years wherein the industry average in the Western countries is 3 to 4%.
So we're growing five to six times the normal industry average and the reason for that is that people are wanting to embrace this new technology.
That's when we started going international and therefore we opened up offices across the world, be it Australia, New Zealand, Southeast Asia or Middle East.
It's Latin America, India and South Asia markets which I represent. The idea is we are very sure that these changes are going to be embraced wholeheartedly very soon in these regions in Middle East where it was introduced three years back.
We see all the big oil and gas companies, be it Aramco to Adnoc, boarding to embrace the new technology.
We are one and half to two years old in India and I'm already seeing people in all the big oil and gas companies to chemical and pharma companies, embracing the change.
Post COVID-19 you see a lot of aging workforce in industries and so their safety, their control monitoring is very important and Blackline provides you that platform.
Also, with new people joining in the workforce, who have all these technology gizmos as a part of their daily work routine, they want their company to look at AI data and integrate data analytics to help them work safely.
In conclusion, this is definitely the future and that's what Blackline firmly believes in and therefore investment in India and other countries is going to increase.
I'm sure they'll be people copying this technology, but we are five years ahead in terms of the lead that we have secured and we will keep on innovating new products in the years to come.