In a candid chat with Benedict Paramanand, Editor of SustainabilityNext, Anish Popli, CEO of ProcMart, share his company’s fast-paced journey into sustainable procurement, how India can become a bigger manufacturing hub and how there is a need for supporting manufacturing startups.
You have a solution for replacing coal
We started procuring briquettes and pellets for our clients so that they could replace using coal. Briquettes may be produced locally from plant and animal waste, which lowers the cost of production and provides a source of income to farmers. Organic resources that are available and renewable are used to manufacture briquettes. As a result, the sustainability of this fuel source is guaranteed. If adopted at scale, this biomass can address a lot of India’s clean air challenges as well.
We started two verticals at that point of time. One was on the biofuel side of it, which was basically an alternative to coal. We went a step ahead and started making briquettes and pallets. We supply them to most of our 70 customers, most of whom are MNCs. With our R&D we are working on how to minimize ash from these products. On the packaging side we are working on several sustainability products around paper and tape and other related items.
Talent Crunch in Manufacturing Sector
India faces talent shortage in the manufacturing sector because everyone wants to work in the services sector. Youth don’t want to work in factories. We need to change this mindset.
When I talk with executives outside India, everyone is looking for China-plus-one solution. Indonesia and Vietnam, not India, are becoming more attractive for companies that want to derisk being heavily dependent on China.
The first and biggest challenge in India is ease of doing business. India needs to improve a lot. When we started our operations in Malaysia, it was smooth and simple. We need to do a lot of work in getting engineers interested in working in the manufacturing sector.
More than that we need to get young entrepreneurs interested in the manufacturing sector. The government should announce special incentives for manufacturing startups.
Your vision for ProcMart in the next five years?
We are growing 100% year-on-year right. We want to launch an IPO in the next three years or so. We want to be contributing to the ease of manufacturing in India. We are getting into projects and services as well. Also, we are getting into fabrication, chemicals. Slowly and gradually, we are increasing our span anything to do with the manufacturing other than the raw material, so we want to make sure that we give our clients a transformational experience.
How can India do better on Sustainable supply chain
We need to incentivize companies to switch to sustainable supply chain. We are a nation which can easily do it. We have the resources. It’s just that we must put our minds into it and do it.
