| |May, 20229years. Among many countries in the Asia Pacific region In-dia holds the highest shares of the market followed by Chi-na. Various market research estimates the Asia Pacific dis-infectant market to be worth $235.57 million by 2024 from $153.59 million in 2019. Growing at a CAGR of 8.9 percent and capturing 25 percent of global market share.New entrants and homegrown startups are now domi-nating this category after the outbreak. In a report released by Nielsen India astonishing figures come from the `sani-tizer' industry a total of 152 new manufacturers started making sanitizers in March. The figures show a promising future for the Indian startups that are trying to foray in the personal and public hygiene market.In this category a new product self-disinfecting coat-ing has been making a great noise lately. Though the sur-face coating technology is a decade old technology but it gained recent success when the Singapore government re-cently announced that it will disinfect the public places including Change Airport by using self-disinfecting sur-face coatings. Self-disinfect-ing surfaces are an emergent technology to control infec-tion. Surfaces and poor public hygiene are one of the major factors contributing to infection patterns. The product is quite promising as it stays on the surface for three months with the help of molecular level bonding that binds on al-most any surface, nano patches of needle like structures rupture the membrane of the pathogens thereby leaving it ineffective. The technology arrived in India and was wel-comed. The entrepreneurs in India looked at it as an oppor-tunity to tap the market and provide a rather permanent solution for public hygiene and safety. As handwash and sanitizers are a temporary solution and are products of personal hygiene.India is now the third-largest startup ecosystem in the world, after the US and China. According to a nine-month funding report, homegrown Indian startups managed to raise $7.67 billion in the nine months that ended on September 30, 2019.Recently a challenge, `Submit Solutions to combat COVID-19' was launched on the Startup India Portal. Which was aimed at scouting innovative technologies and solutions for precau-tionary as well as treatment-related interventions to fight the pandemic. The solutions were invited under Large area san-itization and sterilization, PPE, Testing equipment and oth-ers. The challenge received an overwhelming response and many ideas received initial help from the government. PM's call for `Atmanirbhar Bharat' (self-reliant India) has added new energy to the startup ecosystem. One such startup `3R Scientific Solutions' in technology partnership with Bacti Barrier In-dia incubated with CSIR-IITR has come up with innovative and no less than permanent solution for the public hygiene and safety with their product which is a self-disin-fecting surface coating in a spray form. In an another news recent-ly doing rounds on the internet is about Science and Technology Park, a Pune-based company that has developed a disinfect-tech-nology to reduce the viral load of infected areas within a room, re-ceived government funding recent-ly. The enterprising Indians have also developed AI based models for contactless entry, crowd man-agement to name a few. This shows that the Indian startup ecosystem though slow but picking up pace and is heading in the right direc-tion. While aneconomic slump has subdued the fundings in startups and global slowdown has made the investors a bit susceptible, this has not stopped Indian entrepreneurs from chasing their dreams. A fact that can't be ignored is that, this particular category of providing sustainable solutions for the public and personal hygiene will make exponential growth because of booming healthcare demands of India. Government planning to invest in healthcare infrastructure will put direct impact on this segment with a sudden increase in demand for surface disinfectants and coatings to provide the public with a safe environment and prevent any hospital acquired infections (HAIs). As always, it's the end users that decide the fate of any industry. As of now we witness a marked increase in start-up activities in this particular segment with the emergence of nascent startups across India. We hope to see an emergent market segment that works as a mutual beneficial ground for all the stakeholders. Government planning to invest in healthcare infrastructure will put direct impact on this segment with a sudden increase in demand for surface disinfectants and coatings to provide the public with a safe environment and prevent any hospital acquired infections (HAIs)
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