“The cleaning tools segment in India is highly unorganised which poses a big challenge to the organised players,” says Pravin Khandelwal MD, Pranay Impex Pvt Ltd. Excerpts…
Under the flagship brand – ‘CleanUp’ – besides steel scrubber, we have other products, including toilet brushes, cotton mops & other mops, brooms and wipers. We have adopted a top quality management policy, ensuring that the entire range is made with quality material sourced from reliable vendors.
We have a manufacturing facility at Sonipat, Haryana, operating with a capacity of 90 tonnes of steel scrubbers per month. To ensure efficient working and completion of tasks within the deadline, this facility is divided into different sections, including production, quality, testing, warehousing and packaging. We have maintained specific warehousing units to have secure as well as organized storage of all the products. To look after trouble-free execution of all the tasks that are taking place within our set up, we have hired a team of experienced personnel.
Quality assurance
Our firm is having a team of quality controllers monitoring the production stages to eliminate the scope of any kind of quality compromise. This team is responsible for examining the finished products with the use of advanced instruments and ensure their flawlessness. The quality testing is done on the basis of its finishing and smoothness of surface. Quality focused approaches and appropriate measures have gained us ISO 9001:2008 certification.
Future scenario
The Indian market has been under the influence of products offered at low price from the neighbouring country, but with localisation, recently there has been a change in the standardisation of pricing of products. However, there are not many Indian manufacturers in this category to compete with cheaper products. This is why we are concentrating on regular products which are much in demand, such as grass brooms and other household cleaning products.
To cater to the demand, we are coming up with two more plants: One in Patna to cover East, second in Akola in Maharashtra to cover West and South besides one existing plant catering to Delhi-NCR, North India. The plants are likely to be operational by March 2014. The bigger plant, Akola is to be operational by February 6.
In last few years, with foreign and other organised players entering the Indian market the scenario has changed. But we have to face unhealthy competition from unorganised players who actually are not in the map. The Government should reduce taxes on these products.’