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Vadodara-based Sure Safety used to make space suits for the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). In fact, it had developed India's first indigenous space suit in 2015. As the Covid-19 pandemic hit India, it has now come up with a re-usable PPE kit.
Nishith Dand, Managing Director and founder of Sure Safety said that the waste generated from PPEs can pose a great risk and they have used a new 'air-pass' system to prepare new kits and also done a pilot with a hospital in Vadodara. It would start delivering to other hospitals soon. Apart from the new re-usable PPEs, Sure Safety has already delivered 60,000 PPEs to the Union Health ministry, the defence ministry and Gujarat government. The firm, which was among the first few companies engaged by the Centre to manufacture PPEs for Covid-19, is now scaling up its monthly production to 180,000 kits.
The story resonates across India's local medical equipment manufacturing sector. There have been several stories of local firms rising up to the occasion, be it in low-cost ventilator innovation, or garment makers making PPEs and masks, medicine makers making sanitisers, or automakers opening up their manufacturing and R&D wings to med-tech companies.
"During the good 'normal' days the government was happy with its usual tendering process buying imported products and we were happy with private sector orders and exports. This pandemic has brought out the need for working as one," he said. Imports were not available and GoI even banned exports. "We came together for the national cause. The GoI especially has been extremely professional and fast in decision making and support and has put every single government machinery and infrastructure to work 24*7 for this project," Vishwaprasad Alva, the founder of Skanray Technologies, India's largest exporter of ventilators, told Business Standard.
Since mid-March there has been an unprecedented rise in local manufacturing of medical technology and equipment. According to rough estimates, over Rs 1,000 crore (Rs 10 billion) has been invested in Covid-19 related manufacturing alone by the country's med tech firms and equipment makers.
Smita Shah, managing director of protective gear maker Mediklin Healthcare, one of the largest PPE makers in the country has ramped up production five times since March. "In February we were making around 1000 PPEs per day and now we can make 5000 PPEs per day. For this I have leased out some nearby factories that had taping and stitching machines and given incentives to my workers to walk the extra leg," Shah said.
The government push on local manufacturing came after the supplies from Europe (almost 80 per cent of India's medical devices are imported) started drying up. Moreover, by mid-March the local market started witnessing a shortage of key products like masks, and sanitisers after the common man started buying protective gear for self use. With 850,000 chemists suddenly starting to sell what usually was a hospital supply chain product, a parallel demand arose. Public sector undertaking HLL Lifecare rolled out a tender for emergency procurement of 4 million N95 masks, 20 million surgical masks, one million 500-ml pack sanitisers by March end.
"The Prime Minister's Office mandated to gear up local manufacturing as dependence on imports was not going to help and suddenly for items where India was self sufficient (like masks and sanitisers) there was an unprecedented demand," said a senior government official.
With the government machinery getting into action, a Rs 70 billion domestic PPE industry has been created post the Covid-19 pandemic, next only to China. "All departments have worked together, ministry of textiles, department of pharma, health ministry, commerce ministry. From approvals, to testing, to logistics to hand-holding local industry, everything has happened in lightning speed," he said adding that the pandemic shows that if the bureaucratic red tape is sidelined, how versatile the industry and the government together can be. The official added that now every major ventilator or PPE factory in the country has a government deputed scientist and supply chain manager.
PD Vaghela, secretary, department of pharmaceuticals and the head of the empowered group for essential medical supply said last week that India was largely an importer of these items. "Our strategy has been to use this as an opportunity to develop our own technology and manufacturing capability. We hardly had any manufacturers of PPEs in the country ...now we are making more than 100,000 per day," the official had said.
Automakers were nudged to join hands with the local ventilator makers to help boost capacity as well as solve supply chain issues. Alva explained, "Along with Mahindra and Mahindra (M&M) we designed one of the most advanced and simple user interface ventilators in a record time. The units are in testing now. This unit is designed around Automotive supply chain capabilities and is easier to ramp up." Simialrly, Noida based AgVa Healthcare, that has developed a low cost ventilator machine, has joined hands with the country's largest passenger car maker Maruti Suzuki. It has come-up with a toaster sized product and has ramped up production to 10,000 units a month to serve the growing demand.“There have been countless number of supply chain disruptions however we have streamlined all our processes,” says the company.
The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) has played a key role in boosting local manufacturing - from developing new material for PPEs, to helping develop contact-less sanitiser dispenser to ventilator innovation. For example, the DRDO recently joined hands with Noida's Riot Labz to design a machine called OakMist that sprays the sanitiser solution without a human requiring to touch it.
Priced at Rs 13,000, the startup is currently manufacturing 500 such machines per day while scaling it up to 2,000 per day in two weeks. All government offices including Rashtrapati Bhawan, PMO, and Supreme Court have already installed these dispensers.
Start-ups incubated at premier education institutes are also striving to scale and address the medical equipment shortage in the country.
IIT Madras incubated Fabheads Automation has teamed up with industrial partners to ramp up the production of their face shields to thousands per day. Another startup, Axis Defence Labs has invested in injection moulding to speed up the manufacturing of headgears for PPE kits. It will double production to 10,000 units per day. IIT Hyderabad healthcare startup Aerobiosys Innovations is in the process of translating their Rs 1 lakh ventilator prototype, Jeevan Lite to an alpha build for industry production.
The industry hopes the momentum continues. Rajiv Nath, head of Hindustan Syringes and the forum coordinator of Association of Indian Medical Device Industry (AiMeD) said that things have happened at a fast pace. "We now hope that this momentum continues post the pandemic. If India resorts back to its earlier preference for the L1 bidder (usually a Chinese player), then the domestic industry would be in a limbo," he said.
A government official who is closely monitoring the development of local industry, assures support. "For ventilators, PPEs, masks we will be self reliant and reduce our dependence on imports even after the Covid-19 crisis is over," he said.
