In India, industries and their infrastructure have grown with time. However, little emphasis was given to the environment 20 years back during the period of industrial development which has led to large scale degradation of the natural water bodies, underground water and air. To mitigate this, the government has taken strict steps to correct such inconsistencies in industrial operations. Wastewater from industries is one of the major sources of surface and ground water pollution. Treatment of wastewater is governed by a number of factors that often varies from the types of materials used as well as the difference in their concentration. Hence, the effluent is dynamic, which is a major challenge to the companies in the industrial wastewater treatment market.
Organica Biotech is an organization that has been able to keep up with such dynamic nature of the industrial waste-water through bioremediation and has thus emerged as a shining example in this market. The Vice President of the company, Mr. Tejas Gathanished throws light the role of bioremediation process and the scope of innovation in using the right organ-isms, which the organization has explored, as the guiding light for the company.
How do you see the current Industrial Wastewater Treatment market evolving in India? What are the major factors driving this market growth?
The Indian wastewater treatment market consists of various technologies, equipment’s, machineries, chemicals, services, consultancy and microbial products. Bioremediation has been identified as the most critical component for wastewater treatment as it deals with a ‘living system’ and breaking down organic pollutants which is considered to be a major contributor to water pollution. Bioremediation by definition means “use of naturally occurring microorganisms to consume and break down environmental pollutants”. The “microorganisms” or to re state, the “right microorganisms”, which are crucial to the bioremediation process have always remained in a gray area....till now.
The government has recently taken a serious note on the huge negative impact on our water bodies, ground water, air and soil has occurred as a result of not updating or reviewing our environmental technologies. Measures to ensure no pollution in any form from the industries has been now been put into place. Though industrial wastewater is one of the heavy polluters one can-not deny that untreated sewage is the most prominent contributor to the overall water pollution along with agricultural run-offs. For this particular edition we would be talking only about the industrial wastewater treatment and in that, particularly about bioremediation and use of the “right microorganisms”.
What are the major expectations of clients from the players in this space? How do you meet their expectations?
Selling of microbial products is no more a “product selling concept”. Clients expect a range of services and hand holding along with the product. Most ETP mangers, supervisors and workers are either from an environ-mental or civil background, with limited microbiologists inmost ETP’s. It becomes extremely difficult for people not from this background to analyze the health of biomass in a scientifically proven method.
Our focus has always been to understand the client’s problem related to their wastewater treatment first. This single point of focus of understanding the client’s pain point has always helped us solve their most complicated issues. I am happy to say that being in the bioremediations-pace for more than 21 years we have had more than 850+ clients across various segments throughout India and many more globally.
How is your company positioned in this market?
I would like to believe that we are the pioneers in this space of bioremediation for India. For last 21 years we have solved wastewater related problems for all kind of industries like bulk drug, pesticides, chemical, dyes and intermediate, petro chemical, rubber, dairy, food processing, tannery, paints, distilleries, fertilizers, textiles and many more. Our products, services and technology has been used both, in aerobic and anaerobic processes with equal amount of success.
What are the major differentiating factors that set you apart from other players in this segment?
Unfortunately, most of the players who are in this business of microbial products are mainly repackers and few of them are formulators. Very few companies have core microbial technology in house and the needed R&D to support their customers. I am happy to say that in last two decades we have been constantly improving our product formulations with the help of our microbiologist, biotechnologist and environmentalist in our R&D team.
We have evolved into major leaders in this Industry by providing economical solutions for Wastewater treatment through new bioremediation processes
The application of a microbial product is crucial, along with an expertise to understand and analyze the ETP process to understand the human gaps, process gaps and gaps in various equipment’s. Having a complete360-degree view supports you to pinpoint the problem areas thus helping you in your product delivery system. I firmly believe that our core microbial technology, problem solving approach and more than 21 years of vast experience sets us apart from others in this business.
How has your forward-thinking culture of innovation been helping in designing industrial wastewater treatment solutions to drive a sustainable future?
A single industry runs multiple processes that releases several heterogenous molecules whose concentrations may vary with time resulting in varying effluent compositions. Moreover, each industry has specific effluent treatment plant designed with specific hardware systems that may not give sustainable performance with time due to change in products and processes.
Our expertise lies in Biotechnology to continuously invent, innovate and develop biological solutions to treat various industrial wastewaters by finding industry specific solutions with out altering much of their existing hardware system. With tough to biodegrade pollutants, we develop system or problem specific proprietary microbial consortia-based formulations. These formulations include adaptive, robust and diverse microbial population in the effluent system for effective degradation of pollutants and significantly changing the characteristics of treated water to help qualify the regulatory norms.
Elucidate on the various capabilities of your state-of-the-art DSIR certified R&D laboratory. Tell us with respect to the designing and development of various new innovative products.
Our state-of-the-art DSIR certified R&D laboratory is equipped with sophisticated instruments and systems to design and develop products and solutions for industrial wastewater treatment. Our technically qualified scientists are continuously engaged in development of potent microbial consortia through exhaustive isolation, screening and testing models. We have huge collections of such potent strains in our culture bank with specific blends and formulation which help them remain stable for few years.
We develop lab scale models of specific effluent treatment plant to simulate the real time conditions in order to gauge the performance of our products before taking it to plant level. The product with proven efficacy at the lab level followed by on-site trials undergoes stringent process of quality assurance before launch that includes standard specification development, safety and toxicological evaluation, stability studies, consistency in process through GMP etc.
What is the future roadmap for Organica Bio-tech? How is the company gearing up for the same?
We are targeting various industrial segments with customized solutions for specific problem in order to find sustainable solutions to their effluent treatment system. With the change in regulatory compliance norms, we are geared up to adopt new systems, technologies and processes to help industries to meet those norms. The change is the only constant and with time we focus our efforts in designing innovative industrial wastewater treatment solutions to drive a sustainable future.
