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Interview with Jayant Roy

Jayant Roy
Jayant Roy
Managing Director
Lindstrom Services India
Lindstrom Services India

Provide clean workwear to more than 3 lakh people daily
Established in 2007, Lindstrom India is the only organised rental workwear services company in India which is a subsidiary of the 170-year-old Finnish business group Lindstrom Oy. The company serves customers across India through 11 business units – Visakhapatnam being the latest. Fibre2fashion speaks to Jayant Roy, Managing Director, Lindstrom Services India, about the basic differences of the Indian market from rest of the world in terms of workwear requirements and how the company is leveraging on the same.

You are one of the pioneers of workwear rental services in India. How has been the journey so far since you established base in 2007?

Lindstrom continues to remain the only organised rental workwear service company in India, employing more than 700 people across the country. Today, we provide clean workwear to more than 300,000 people on a daily basis with more than 1.9 million garments in circulation in India catering to more than 2000 customers across different industry segments. Starting our operations from Chennai in 2007, Lindstrom India today has service centers in 11 cities including Chennai, Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Panchkula, Vadodara, Vizag, Tinsukia and Pune.
 

What are the various digital solutions that will transform the experience of customers the Lindstrom India unit is working on?

Recently, we launched an eLindstrom service portal. This web based service allows customers to better manage their own orders and track the workwear location between their own facilities and the laundry, which eventually also increases the transparency of its operation. Each of the company’s garments is equipped with an automatic remote tracking tag, which allows it to easily track the usage of the garment and their wash cycles.

The company has been using remote identification for a long time in its laundries. The next step is to take advantage of the new generation remote tags at its customers’ premises, which will make their everyday lives easier.

Have Indian companies become serious about the sustainability issue yet?

Sustainability is a topic across all organised companies today as they all understand the price of not working towards improved sustainability. Having said that, organisations in India are still looking at very big-ticket items in sustainability but we have seen that many of the small items that we often tend to ignore are the ones which have the biggest impact. For example, trashed garments or uniforms are one of the biggest waste generators that impact the environment globally. Similarly, washing a pair of garments at home uses more than 2 times water compared to industrial washing. Companies often tend to ignore these topics. One of our business values is to help our customers become more sustainable with the use of our services where both the above examples are taken care of by us and clearly documented as well which help our customers reach closer to their sustainability goals.

How is the Indian market different from the rest of the world? What are the specific demands of this market?

Unlike developed countries, in a country like India, workwear rental services are a relatively new concept introduced by us about 10 years back. Most of the companies in India have been depending on their own in-house capability for meeting the various requirements of workwear for their employees. But now, with the emergence of Lindstrom, the entire 360-degree need of an organisation is being taken care of, thereby freeing a good chunk of efforts and resources, which the organisation can use in its core business.

Customers are looking for a holistic and quality solution that will support them to take care of non-core activities like workwear management; this will allow them to focus on their core business. Moreover, they do not want to invest heavily in buying workwear and save significantly in terms of resources.

They see Lindstrom as a one-point solution for ensuring hygiene of garments in the most professional way.

What is the sourcing strategy at Lindstrom India?

Lindstrom sources it garments from selected local manufacturing companies. Initially, Lindstrom, which was importing most of the fabric requirement (for garment manufacturing) from China and other South East Asian countries, is now sourcing almost 95 per cent of the requirement locally from its vendor network in India.
What is the sourcing strategy at Lindstrom India?

We are in the midst of a lockdown. What’s on your drawing board for now?

Lindstrom serves versatile industries and businesses, including many critically important ones that are required to keep the society running during these times, like food, pharma and healthcare companies, who require reliable and high standards of hygiene.

Lindstrom’s management system has comprehensive guidance on how to ensure the quality, safety and continuation of its business operations and customer deliveries even in a state of emergency.

Currently our focus is to make sure we provide the service required smoothly, and at the same time ensure that our people stay safe during these challenging times.

What steps have you taken to safeguard your workers?

Lindstrom has taken various measures for safety and good health and extended its support to give hand sanitisers/disinfectants to our employees for their families as well. We are regularly sanitising all the workplaces and delivery vehicles and encouraging social distancing and non-handshake greetings. Twice body temperature is being measured for employees who are present on the field to support supply of essential services. We have taken the initiative to invite professional doctor to spread awareness via virtual talk and resolve any doubts and assumptions pertaining to COVID-19. Lindstrom has drafted a detailed emergency preparedness manual and given training at all the levels starting from textile care worker group to senior management levels.

According to the COVID19 situation, risk levels are identified and plans are well drafted to handle the situation. Core team is having regular virtual meeting and monitoring the situation and government announcements and acting accordingly.

Lindstrom India has also started various initiatives to recognise/reward our superheroes who are there in the field to support deliveries to serve essential service providers.

Do you have your manufacturing base in India? If so, where is it located?

Lindstrom has its own ‘Production on Demand’ manufacturing unit in Mumbai wherein a part of its requirements is made in addition to working with some dedicated partners for our overall garment requirements. Lindstrom India has also set up a dedicated R&D/design team, which works closely with its customers to meet their specific needs.

How do the workwear needs change from industry to industry? Please elaborate.

In pharmaceutical and food processing among others, the primary requirement is hygiene and cleanliness, while, in the case of automobile and other such engineering manufacturing activities, the main issue is safety. In pharmaceutical industry (for certain activities like production of vaccines & other drugs) and electronics (while making semi-conductors and microprocessors), a certain type of workwear is needed, which should not only be free of all foreign particles but also be completely passive enough for not influencing/impacting the activities carried out by the employees wearing them.

Have you quantified your projected losses? What steps do you plan to take once business resumes?

As every other company, Lindstrom too will be impacted by losses due to the coronavirus pandemic. However, we are also seeing that some of the core industries that we are working with in India like the food and pharmaceutical industry as well as the healthcare industry are still working during these times at the same speed or even at a higher speed than usual. We are continuing to provide our services to these segments in order to maintain the highest levels of hygiene at all times and in that sense the impact of this closure is expected to be limited in India.

What are your future expectations from the Indian market? Which are the industries you would be concentrating on?

India is one of the main growth drivers for Lindstrom group and we have been operating in this country for more than 12 years now and have expanded our operations to cover almost the entire geography of India. In 2018, we also launched India’s first Cleanroom Workwear Services in Pune to cater to the growing hygiene needs of the pharmaceutical industry in India. With our high growth rate in India, Lindstrom as a group will continue to invest in expanding operations in the future as well. Our business concept is still unique in many industry segments in India. The beauty of our business is that companies in all industry segments and companies of all sizes are our potential customers.

How does Lindstrom operate? What are the steps involved?

Lindstrom carries out a detailed analysis of the customer’s workwear requirements and thereafter undertakes designing and manufacturing of the garments, followed by its distribution, collection, maintenance stocking and finally disposal of the garments on completion of the life cycle. It collects the soiled garments from the site/shop floor and provides the workers with clean and well-laundered garments on a regular basis. As a service provider it not only offers all these services, but also invests heavily in the designing and manufacturing of these garments. The company charges a certain fee as rental which varies from industry to industry, depending upon their requirements.

How do you dispose-off the garments on completion of their life cycle? Is there any kind of recycling involved?

Environmental issues are a hot topic and we at Lindström are constantly looking for alternatives to more efficient use of textiles and recycling innovations for the worn-out garments. Our target is to recycle 100 per cent of textile generated by 2025 and in India, we are well and truly on our path to achieve this milestone way before that.

Our business model is based on a circular economy and we have strong expertise in rental workwear service. This competence over rental textiles is now further expanded to some other product sectors, like in shopping bags. Reducing usage of plastics bags is a great example of an environmental action that resonates with the larger audience and is an intriguing opportunity for our current customers. Currently, the market options are either a plastic bag, paper bag or fabric bag – all of which the end-user will buy and either throw or store away thus reducing the product life cycle or creating waste. We have recently launched our returnable shopping bags which is a durable, environmentally friendly solution.

What are your revenue expectations for the next two fiscals?

As mentioned above, India is one of the key growth drivers for Lindstrom group along with China, Russia, UK, to name a few others. In India with our existing two service lines, workwear services and cleanroom services, we are confident of growing at more than 30 per cent per annum. (PC)

Has the ‘Make in India’ policy played any role in the style of your doing business in India?

Lindstrom is supporting the ‘Make-in-India’ initiative of the government of India in many ways. Besides ensuring that we source and manufacture all our products locally in India, we are also helping most of our customers, especially in the food and pharma sectors, to adopt best manufacturing practices with our service offerings. Besides enabling them to focus on their key operations and bringing convenience, we help them meet key hygiene and safety requirements and also help bring in best practices in operating standards from the developed countries making it easier for our clients to pass the stringent global audit requirements and helping them improve their export portfolio.
Published on: 21/04/2020

DISCLAIMER: All views and opinions expressed in this column are solely of the interviewee, and they do not reflect in any way the opinion of Fibre2Fashion.com.