India has the mindset and talent availability but there is a need of an entrepreneurial spirit, environment compliance, focus on customer service and quality. We have to ensure the timely project implementation, vertical integration, cost competitiveness and build a culture of innovation, stated B. Narayan, Group President, Reliance Industries Limited while sharing his thoughts at the recently concluded 4th Edition of NextGen Chemical and Petrochemical Summit 2024 organized by the Indian Chemical News in Mumbai.

Narayan believes that India’s opportunity lies in artificial intelligence, sustainability, bio-based products, biotechnology, low emission products and processes, and electrochemistry among others.

Outlining the importance of emulating China in terms of scaling up of its manufacturing at the inaugural session, ‘Making India a Global Manufacturing Hub: Opportunities & Challenges’, Narayan said: “During 17th century, China and India had almost similar contributions to the world economy, each contributing about 25% and post industrialization the economies of both countries diminished. While after 1980 China took off, India started crawling or probably stayed at one place. We are at about US $200 billion and the sector is going to grow to about $850 billion by 2040. The manufacturing sector of India is about 520 billion and the contribution of chemical sector is about 30% as against the Chinese manufacturing sector size which is nine times. China with its scale, new technology, R&D, speed of action, infrastructure, support system and strong position in the global supply chain. We must learn from it how to build a strong manufacturing set up. The 30% of our consumption is met by importing products including methanol, acetic acid, styrene, polycarbonate and even PVC. Some of these are the the building blocks that we are importing. If we invest in these plants there is definitely an advantage and actually it is a step towards becoming a manufacturing hub.”

“China now being isolated by the West to some extent but we have to actually watch out for two other countries which are Vietnam and Mexico, Both countries are leap frogging and  whatever they are going to produce is going to be export oriented. Comparatively India’s economy is primarily based on consumption and less on export but fortunately Indian government's motive today is to make in India, make for India and the world. We certainly have a tremendous scope for us to grow and take advantage of incentives and schemes like PLI in certain areas like textiles, green hydrogen and few other areas. The industry too has to play a bigger role. We have to work on downstream side such as anode active materials for the battery chemicals. There are some players such as Reliance getting into battery manufacturing business and naturally on the downstream side of the batteries and user side of the automobiles," Narayan added further.

Speaking on the India’s strength areas, Narayan opined: "In India, we are good at building big plants and pretty much good at maintaining safety in our operating plants and environment compliance. We have customer service minded people and we have been extremely competitive and the capital cost wise probably is about 20 to 30% cheaper. The advantages in India include English language and good legal system because the foreign investors are interested in these two factors and the intellectual property (IP) protection is fairly well managed and then we have a large pool of talent coming out of the universities every year who can be trained to make them employable in the chemical sector."

Emphasizing on the need for investing into new technologies, Narayan said, "The innovation mindset is necessary and as an example we have nano urea in use for some time now. A 45 mL of nano urea is equivalent to about 45 kg of normal urea. Such innovative products coming into the market is a good sign. India has about 5,300 companies listed on Bombay Stock Exchange and 2,200 on National Stock Exchange as compared to 2,800 companies registered in New York Stock Exchange and 3,300 in NASDAQ. The difference itself shows the entrepreneurship available in the country and the chemical sector has adapted to the change very well."

On the need for incorporating artificial intelligence and sustainability, Narayan said, "We must incorporate AI in our manufacturing and also look at the sustainability aspect of it. There are products which are sustainable and are looking at the hydrogen economy. The products emanating from the building block of green hydrogen are produced purely by using green power that is solar or wind power or maybe alternative power. There is definitely a pressure on maintaining the emission levels and efficiency in manufacturing and all these factors have to be taken into account if you want to be competitive in the international marketplace. The big players are developing the new catalyst and high throughput catalyst screening systems. We need to take this as an opportunity."

"About 100 million tonnes of products are produced globally through the electrochemical process and there is going to be a scope for the chemicals produced through that process. In that direction, the hydrogen economy is going to play a big role and if we make green hydrogen, we can have the derivatives such as green methanol, green ammonia, and green urea. There is also scope for hydrogen recycling of the polymer and plastics. There are processes being developed and at pretty nascent stage yet but there are areas where we are going to be big players, be it polymer production and polymer capacity. At the same time, we need to also handle the used polymers well to capture the potential," concluded Narayan.