The boom in the Indian real estate, hospitality and healthcare businesses has made the international players in plumbing and sanitation products and services consider the Indian market seriously.
Those training their sights on India are largely spurred by the probable entry of global construction giants following the government's policy to allow foreign direct investment in the country's real estate sector.
They also feel upwardly mobile Indians, having experienced the convenience of world-class sanitation and plumbing facilities, are likely to demand the same for their homes or offices.
Delegates to the Indian Plumbing Association's two-day "Plumbing 2006 Seminar and Expo" that began on Friday, told Business Standard on the sidelines of the conference that the global players, coming mainly from countries like Denmark, Germany or Holland, have either opened full-fledged India offices or set up manufacturing facilities to serve clients in the construction and infrastructure sectors.
DP Pumps from Holland who supply pumps and pressure distributions to the real estate sector have seen their revenues grow from modest initial figures to euro 1.5 million last year.
"An increasing awareness about the need to have the same water pressure on all the floors of a building has propelled the sales of our systems here," said Nitish Fansalkar of DP Pumps.
Kishor Srinivasan, Business Development Manager at ACO Systems and Solutions Pvt Ltd, the Indian subsidiary of Germany's ACO Severin Ahlmann GmbH & Co, KG, said his company has entered India only this year, and plans to work mainly with project consultants in the infrastructure sector.
"Though there are products that we sell off-the-shelf, we offer solutions to a specific situation and then back them up with our technology," Srinivasan said. The company has signed up with TCS Chennai and Alchemy Hospital in Chandigarh for supply of its solutions, Srinivasan informed.
Amit Deo of Grundfos Systems, Denmark, said the company has set up a plant in Chennai to manufacture a range of commercial building products. "About 30 per cent of our turnover of Rs 95 crore {Rs 950 million (2005)} from the Indian plant comes from plumbing systems, and the rest for other channels such as oil and auto sectors," Deo said.
Participants in the expo observed that the presence of global plumbing products in the country will also be driven by the entry of global architect firms. "The architects who have worked with these companies elsewhere will very likely recommend their systems and products," a delegate from a PVC pipes major said.
Allaying fears of a setback to the local manufacturers from the entry of multinationals in the business, well known architect Sanjay Kanvinde said the market is so big and there are so many price levels that there would be room for everyone.
Phansalkar said the estimated market size for plumbing products is about Rs 3,000 crore (Rs 30 billion) and it will grow exponentially as expensive yet long lasting material is gaining acceptance on the consumer side.
Earlier, inaugurating the seminar, Pune Divisional Commissioner Prabhakar Karandikar said that the need for efficient plumbing has assumed centrestage as there is an increasing awareness about scarce water resources and the need for public health safety.
Sudhakaran Nair, President of the Indian Plumbing Association, organisers of the two- day event, said the association is working towards the development of common plumbing norms for the country, based on the norms followed in the United States.