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COLUMN
SPECIALTY CHEMICALS: POISED FOR QUANTUM LEAP Integral to India’s economic surge and its aspirations to become a global manufacturing hub by fulfilling endconsumer needs
I SHOBHIT AGGARWAL CHIEF STRATEGY OFFICER GLOBAL CHEMICALS, FASHION YARN & INSULATORS ADITYA BIRLA GROUP
ndia’s specialty chemicals sector has been playing a pivotal role in driving the chemical industry’s growth. It constitutes approximately 20% of the total chemicals market in India by value. India is emerging as a preferred manufacturing hub including contract and custom synthesis for specialty chemicals both for domestic as well as export markets. Indian specialty chemicals industry is expected to grow 1112% to reach an estimated USD 64 bn by 2025. Further, it is expected to provide an opportunity of an additional USD 60 bn across specialty chemicals segments over the next 8-10 years. The numbers are big but what makes specialty chemicals a segment to watch out for is the role it plays in enabling India’s advances in megatrend industries such as nutrition and wellness, hygiene and personal care, water treatment, lightweight vehicles (including EVs) and renewables. In order to capitalize this growth potential, Indian speciality chemical companies need to ride the wave of evolving trends by servicing newer sectors, venturing into new chemistries. Industry also need to adopt new ways of doing business with emphasis on collaborations and digitization. EVOLUTION OF A REVOLUTION Interestingly, India accounts for 16% of dye specialty chemicals globally, but we are
still less than 5% of the overall global specialty chemical pie. The reason for this is India has always focused on a restricted range of traditional segments like agrochemicals, pharma and textiles to some extent. However, other markets have ventured into segments like automotive, polymers, food, nutrition, life science, defense, etc. increasing the pie of the specialty chemicals. There is an ongoing evolution towards sustainable products and processes, circular economy and end of life material recovery. Thus, the chemicals industry is witnessing an increasing scope of servicing new sectors with products and solutions, with an increasing need for specialty chemicals and materials. The Indian industry today will thus evolve to capitalize on the larger trends at play to move synchronously with global companies. This will lead to a surge of new chemistries that will flow into India and being offered by Indian chemical companies, which were conventionally the bastion of only the major international players. Indian specialty chemical companies will need to adopt to these changing requirements with strong technology support, investment in research & development, identification of customer needs and focused customer collaboration. COLLABORATION WITH THE STAKEHOLDERS As complexity and sophistication enters the downstream industries and consumer demand for contemporary products and technology grows, the customers of downstream industries would look at the Indian industry to provide not just products but robust solutions. Through active collaboration with the value chain, Indian companies will need to start thinking of solutions that will impact the entire downstream ecosystem – make processes more efficient and products more sustainable. This would need increased R&D, innovation and application development. For instance, mobility ecosystems of the future involving fleets of autonomous and electric vehicles, will require a whole new range of materials and specialty chemicals to pro-
