Latest news with #ETMSMEAwards2024
Time of India
4 days ago
- Business
- Time of India
This company changed India's medical disposables market. Here's how
Live Events The indispensability of medical disposables was in full focus during the Covid-19 pandemic, when constant supplies of gloves, masks, and gowns became critical in the fight against viral transmission and cross-contamination. Without these single-use products, the number of Covid-related casualties worldwide would be even higher than the World Health Organization's cumulative toll of seven million-plus Of course, the importance of medical disposables goes beyond pandemics and emergency scenarios. Single-use healthcare products improve patient outcomes and operational efficiency by saving on time that would've otherwise gone into sterilisation processes. They also help medical facilities adhere to regulatory compliances and enforce strict infection India, one of the world's largest healthcare markets, Plasti Surge Industries Pvt Ltd (PSI) has pioneered the healthcare consumables market with its range of disposable kits, sterile surgical accessories and devices, surgical gowns, and protective apparel. For 36 years and counting, it has observed stringent quality control at its manufacturing facility in Amravati, Maharashtra. The result is a client roster that includes humanitarian agencies, municipal corporations, state governments, and the who's who of pharma, biotech, and healthcare. Think UNICEF, the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai, Telangana state government, All India Institute Of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Apollo Hospitals, Abbott, and Haffkine, to name its many honours, PSI was named one of India's Top 100 SMEs by the India SME Forum and the Ministry of MSME. Under the leadership of Executive Director Aditya Daga, PSI has carved a niche in India's cut-throat medical disposables market. Its decades of experience providing medical supplies for the public sector, innovative mother and child delivery kits, a pan-India distribution network of more than 450 dealers, and a presence in 16 international markets helped it stand out from a pool of over 15,000 applications at the ET MSME Awards 2024 — India's largest and most credible MSME awards — where it was awarded 'Pharmaceutical and Healthcare MSME of the Year'.As much as PSI is a force to reckon with when it comes to single-use medical products, it's also turning the tide for healthcare sustainability. The environmental impact of traditional healthcare disposables is a concern — India produces over 550 metric tonnes of such waste daily, exacerbating the problem of medical waste management since single-use gloves, gowns, and kits take hundreds of years to break down. Through its vertical PSI Dispo, Plasti Surge Industries is not only aligning with global sustainability goals, but making compostable disposables accessible to institutions such as concept of single-use healthcare disposables was virtually unknown in India until PSI scaled their production. In adapting to the times and setting new benchmarks for eco-friendly medical products, the company is proving that it is up to the task of remaining committed to responsible more winner vignettes of the ET MSME Awards , keep an eye on this space.
Time of India
5 days ago
- Business
- Time of India
This Bengaluru-based firm is quietly saving thousands of mothers and newborns—here's how
For Arun Agarwal, who was born in Alwar, the reports of stillborn babies and maternal deaths were familiar occurrences. For years, he has heard these heartbreaking stories. However, his perspective changed when he learnt more about the high maternal and infant mortality rates in developing countries during his time at Vellore Institute of Technology, prompting him to seek a solution. According to the Rural Health Statistics report for 2022-23, there is a severe shortage of gynaecologists in rural India. The report highlights that against a requirement of 5,491, there are only 1,442 gynaecologists available, resulting in a shortfall of 74.2%. After graduation, Agarwal pursued a biomedical engineering course and visited several hospitals and labour wards across the country for his research. In 2015, Agarwal joined the Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC), which was looking for entrepreneurs working in maternity and child healthcare. A year later, the idea for Janitri Innovations germinated. Janitri is focused on providing affordable and accessible maternal and neonatal healthcare. Today, it has a wide range of products for both hospitals and at-home services for mothers. Its flagship product, Keyar, which initially started as an affordable and portable foetal monitoring device, today has different variants, such as a beltless ECG/EMG-based foetal maternal labour monitoring patch, postpartum haemorrhage risk detection, a wireless & portable smart CTG machine, a smart newborn jaundice monitor, a handheld foetal monitor and a home NST (Non-Stress Test) for high-risk mothers. Janitri has been granted seven patents; it has also filed 19 patents. The company has monitored over 200,000 mothers, catered to more than 800 hospitals and saved 8,000 lives operating in more than 11 countries. Live Events Janitri Innovations was also the winner of India's Top MSME of the Year- Micro, at the ET MSME Awards 2024. Janitri Innovations was also the winner of India's Top MSME of the Year- Micro, at the ET MSME Awards 2024. Maternity miracle Like many innovative start-ups, Janitri had its own share of a long gestation period. It started pilots in 2016 and launched the product commercially in 2021 after getting regulatory approvals. 'It's been four years since the commercialisation of our products. We have added so many other products and use cases, including post-delivery and newborn monitoring, since then. We were a team of 15 people in 2019 when we had to go through the ISO regulatory approvals. Now, we have grown into a team of 70 people,' Agarwal says. Janitri's other flagship product, Keyar Echo, is a first-of-its-kind home pregnancy monitoring device that allows expectant mothers to monitor their baby's heartbeat and well-being from home, ensuring timely medical decisions. Keyar's other variants, Keyar DT Max and Keyar DT Max Plus, enable advanced and smart pregnancy monitoring and immediate postpartum monitoring for timely intervention. It allows remote monitoring with data access on mobile apps for the doctors so timely action can be taken. Janitri has also enhanced hospital efficiency through Navam software, which digitises labour monitoring with AI-driven alerts and partograph generation, ensuring better clinical outcomes. These innovations are backed by patented technologies, extensive clinical validation and a user-centric approach addressing gaps in both hospital-based and home-based care. Janitri's Daksh SI Max is a smart obstetric shock index monitor, which is a portable medical-grade wireless device that helps doctors predict postpartum haemorrhage risk. Bengaluru-based Latha Venkatram, a senior obstetrician- gynaecologist, who has been with Janitri since its inception, explained that back then they had been looking for a low-cost, effective foetal monitoring device using electrical impulses, and this is where Janitri's innovation came to the rescue. 'There was only one other such product, which was expensive, but Janitri was a made-in-India device, affordable and fantastic. The partographs produced are better with this; we have compared it with a traditional Huntley Partograph monitor, and the graph is satisfactory. The other important feature is the maternal heart rate is also recorded. So twin monitors are also available now, so the foetal surveillance is quite effective, easy and fairly cost-effective,' she says. The company was also a part of Shark Tank India Season 2 in 2023. Agarwal went with Namita Thapar, Executive Director of Emcure Pharmaceuticals, for an offer of Rs 1 crore for 2.5% equity. Talking about Janitri's success overseas, Agarwal explains that they see similar maternal healthcare issues in the Global South. 'The field of pregnancy and newborn care faces issues in other developing countries like Southeast Asia, Africa, and South America. So, we get a lot of queries from those countries from doctors, hospital distributors and other stakeholders. We have deployed the product in Kenya, South Africa, Malaysia, Brazil, among other countries,' he says, adding that now the company is not very aggressive for the international market and will become so after getting international approvals from the FDA and CE. Agarwal highlighted that different variants of their products make it affordable to all—starting from Rs 40,000 to over Rs 2 lakh for a premium version. In hospitals, the devices start at Rs 1 lakh each. What next? The company is now focusing on building products and features for the entire journey of pregnancy, labour and newborns up to 2 years old. 'Our whole focus is purely from the perspective of some kind of vital monitoring and AI-based early-decision-making algorithms which can give support or early alerts to the healthcare worker or mother at home,' he says.
Business Mayor
16-05-2025
- Business
- Business Mayor
From dump to data: How this start-up is fixing India's waste management issue
During their research and survey conducted with an NGO at the dumping ground, they found that the average life expectancy of people residing in the vicinity of the dump site was 37 years. Moreover, the Deonar dumping ground was centrally located in Mumbai. The duo realised that such incidents would begin to impact the entire city soon; at that moment, the idea for the waste management firm ReCircle was born. 'From the Deonar dump site, I think over the next four to five years, Gurashish and I would have visited almost 40 dump sites in different parts of the country, and the situation is as bad as it is in Mumbai. So, that's how our journey began in 2016,' says CEO and Co-founder Nainani. ReCircle is focused on building a circular future in the country. It has so far diverted more than 169,000 tonnes of waste across more than 310 cities in India, partnering with over 45 processing and more than 400 collection partners. Its key initiatives include ClimaOne (a tech-enabled waste supply chain tracking platform), Plastic EPR Services, and Textile Recovery Facility (TRF). ReCircle has impacted more than 3,500 Safai Saathis and works with over 60 brands, such as Hindustan Unilever and UNDP India. ReCircle was also the winner of India's Top Innovative MSME of the Year – Small, at the ET MSME Awards 2024. Waste not, want not In 2016, the company started with a B2C model but pivoted to B2B in 2018, realising that larger players and producers of plastic packaging must be held accountable for the waste they generate. ReCircle primarily focuses on the dry waste sector. Its major service includes helping brands like Coca-Cola, Nestlé, and Mondelez—essentially FMCG companies—in achieving plastic neutrality while complying with plastic waste management or the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) regulation. The company's ClimaOne platform, which was launched last year, is in an inclusive model where all stakeholders of the waste management supply chain—local scrap dealers, aggregators, and waste management companies—are onboarded. This model includes a collection partner app and a web-based dashboard for the brand owner. 'So, when a brand buys plastic credits from us, they're able to see the entire track and trace of where the material was, who collected it, what the quantity is, what the quality is, and where it has been finally used for recycling itself. Now this data is being used for, of course, their EPR compliance-based reporting, but also they're using it for their SGD (Sustainable Goals Development) reporting globally. So, ClimaOne essentially brings in transparency and traceability in this informal waste management sector,' he said, adding that initially, it was quite difficult to get the collection partners on board because they're largely informal in nature and are not used to working on technology platforms. ReCircle operates its own collection units in Mumbai, where it handles the collection, sorting, and segregation of materials before selling them to recyclers. Honey products manufacturer Honey Twigs has been working with ReCircle for the past four years. The company uses food-grade plastic as its primary packaging material, as they could not find an affordable and environmentally friendly packaging solution with a shelf life of 18 months. 'Till the time we don't find such an option, we want to make sure we are discarding our product waste responsibly. For this EPR responsibility, we hired ReCircle, which has helped us neutralise our environmental footprint. They helped us in responsibly discarding our return or unsold stock. The only other option is to hand it over to the municipal corporation, who simply throws it on an open dump. So, having such a partner helps us as a sustainability brand,' says Jigar Mehta, Co-founder, Honey Twigs. Future ReCircle is now working on PET flakes, derived from small fragments of PET bottles. These flakes can be recycled and used as raw material for manufacturing various products, including furniture and packaging materials. A pilot is being conducted in North India, with operations set to commence this month. ReCircle is also working on setting up a recycling infrastructure and collaborating with MSME recyclers who face challenges in upgrading their capacities or achieving the desired quality output. 'So, we're partnering with MSME recyclers where we are going to work with them on a contract basis. This will help them as well as us in scaling up our capacities for recycled content. We have the supply chain in place, and we have the customers in place, and as per the EPR requirement, there's a mandatory requirement for brands to use recycled plastic in their supply chain itself. So that's where we see the demand growing not just in India but globally as well,' says Nainani. Other than this, ReCircle will be expanding from plastic waste to textile waste, and research is currently going on around it.
