From cleaning toxic tobacco bales by hand to fighting ten-storey-high factory fires, facility management is rarely the glamorous side of the cleaning industry — yet it touches nearly every part of how India works. Sanjeev Kumar N G S, Chief Executive Officer of Dusters Total Solutions Services Pvt. Ltd, speaks to Clean India Journal on his three-decade journey from the construction sites of the 1990s, where child labour and unsafe conditions were the norm, to today’s data-driven, robotics-powered industry reshaping dignity, safety, and efficiency for thousands of frontline workers
What drew you into facility management, and what’s kept you there?
A. I was in the construction industry, and my first exposure to the importance of housekeeping came from my managing director, who was very particular about it. My real learning happened between 2004 and 2005 and there has never been a moment of regret about specializing in facility management. Every day, I feel FM solves a real problem for the customer, whether it is manpower, cleaning, experience, or sustainability.
Do you have data showing that better facilities actually reduce attrition?
A. Yes, 100%. We have data comparing customers who don’t invest in these facilities versus those who do. Take large IT parks where janitors often have to walk one to one-and-a-half kilometres because public transport isn’t allowed inside the campus. That’s manageable in the morning shift, but brutal in the heat during the second shift, and a safety concern for women on the night shift ending around 10-11 pm. Addressing this with shuttle services, R&R activities, and festive celebrations has made a real difference.
How does this kind of data-backed approach translate into real ROI for the client?
A. Take the carpet example again. We are now in our 10th-11th year with this system, and previously, clients were replacing carpets every 4-6 years due to damage and mismatched patch repairs. The data brings transparency and accountability for everyone — the manufacturer, the client, and our own teams. Data helps us get decisions right.
Can you put a number to the kind of savings or ROI a client can expect from proper FM?
A. For a client with no structured FM approach, savings can run 20-25%. For clients who are already running mature, Six Sigma-driven programs, the incremental savings are smaller, maybe 2-3%, because they have already optimized.
Robotics seems to be the next big shift in FM. What’s DTSS’s roadmap here?
A. We have set an ambitious target of deploying 500 robotic machines over the next 3-4 years. We currently have around 15. Robotics works best for repetitive, low-judgment tasks like vacuuming a large, carpeted area where there’s no real decision-making involved. Where there’s spotting, hygiene judgment, or air quality considerations, a human-robot mix works better. It’s not a replacement for people; it’s a complement and it will keep evolving.
How is a hospital as a flagship case for robotics?
A. We have managed a 1,200-bed hospital for about 13-15 years now where 70% of patients are on government schemes or below the poverty line, and 30% are paying or VIP patients. This hospital was also where we deployed our very first robotic machine. It’s now one of our best-maintained sites, and we regularly get positive feedback and certifications from government officials.
Were there specific moments that made the case for keeping humans out of high-risk cleaning environments?
A. During COVID, our staff had to clean hospital areas suited head-to-toe, with no certainty they wouldn’t get infected themselves. They worked in PPE for four days, then took a three-day break to bring down viral load exposure. If we would have
had robotic solutions at that point, we wouldn’t have had to risk their lives at all.
What does FM look like in manufacturing facilities?
A. The challenges are very specific to the environment. In food and FMCG manufacturing, you get continuous spillage — noodle particles falling off conveyor belts, or hot oil at 50-60°C bursting during bottle-packing that needs immediate cleanup. In bearing manufacturing, oil spillage has to be cleaned fast or the line stops — there’s zero tolerance for breakdowns in continuous processes. In tobacco manufacturing, workers open raw tobacco bales by hand and routinely encounter dead snakes, scorpions, and beetles inside. We now drive 5S methodology as a starting point, and staff need to stay alert to the entire premises, not just their assigned area.
How do you train staff to handle the safety risks specific to manufacturing environments?
A. The core principle we follow is that an untrained person is often overconfident; they think they can handle anything. So if there is a chemical spill, they will jump straight in without recognizing the danger, even when the substance is genuinely hazardous. A trained person pauses those extra ten or twenty seconds to put on the right PPE before acting. That gap in judgment is everything.
How would you describe the perception of facility management as an industry?
A. People often call it a thankless job, and I think that’s largely because we don’t sell ourselves well. If the industry articulated its own value more boldly, what it actually creates and protects, that perception would shift on its own. It is not a thankless job at all. It is genuinely a wonderful one.