The Indian pest control industry at the Clean India Show (CIS) 2022
CIS is a unique annual knowledge-sharing and networking opportunity
After a two-year break, organizers of the Clean India Show (CIS) held its eighteenth edition from 13 to 15 July 2022 at the Greater NOIDA India Exposition Mart. Unfortunately, the COVID-10 pandemic came in the way of the CIS in 2020 and 2021. Even in 2022, the organizers planned it for February 2022 but had to postpone it when rising COVID-19 cases that month made them plan it for July 2022.
Since 2005, the Clean India Show (CIS) has brought together cleaning & hygiene industry professionals and end-users or buyers to promote facility cleaning and maintenance in India. I remember participating in the inaugural CIS session in Mumbai, in which Pest Control India Pvt. Ltd. (PCI) had one of the fifteen stalls at the exhibition venue. CIS is a much larger event seventeen years since its inception and now has hundreds of stall exhibitors at each of its editions.
CIS is now the single largest Cleaning Industry platform for manufacturers to showcase their cleaning and hygiene solutions. In addition, facility management (FM) professionals patronize CIS to learn the latest product innovations and cleaning solutions from across the globe.
CIS is a great place for FM professionals to update themselves with the latest innovation & technology for managing commercial, municipal, industrial, and residential buildings.
CIS is a sought-after networking event for product suppliers and solution seekers to connect, establish and grow their relationships.
In 2022, the CIS organizers wanted to formalize the association of the Indian pest control industry at their annual event. Therefore, during the tenure of Indian Pest Control Association (IPCA) President Raju Parulkar, the event had a session by him at the Buyer’s Meet on the day of the two-day show from 19 January to 20, 2017, in Hyderabad.
This year the Clean India Journal editor, Mohan M, interacted with the Indian pest control industry representatives to enhance their participation in the CIS in 2022 and beyond. As a result, Mohana nominated Sonali Apte to coordinate with PCOs and product manufacturers in April 2022. As a result, at the CIS 2022, there were three pest control companies, three product manufacturers, and a cleaning company set up by a PCO.
FMC, Bayer Environmental Sciences, and Pestology Combines were the three product manufacturers. PECOPP Pest Control, Truly Pest Solution, and Pest Shields were the three PCOs. Indo Gulf Pest Control’s cleaning solutions provider, Indo Gulf Cleaning Solutions, also had a stall at the CIS 2022.
On the first day of the event, Sonali organized a panel discussion of the pest control industry participants on the impact of sustainability trends on their businesses. Siddharth Balwani, Rachit Agarwal, Ravi Kumar, Vikas Sharma, Jitendra Gawade, and Giridhar Pai, representing the pest control industry stall holders, took part in this one-hour meeting.
Our customers who have sustainability goals in their business objectives are already asking their vendors to comply with those requirements. The pest control industry panel agreed that the right approach to incorporating sustainability in pest treatments would be to go back to the roots of our industry by adopting Integrated Pest Management (IPM) in its truest sense.
CIS organizers have video recorded the inputs for the integrated approach for sustainable pest management from the participating pest control industry members and shall be sharing it publicly soon.
As a result of the wide publicity of the event, numerous PCO owners from the Delhi-NCR visited the CIS over three days. In addition, thousands of prospective buyers of pest control services and products also came to the event giving a great opportunity for PCOs with a stall to interact with customers.
CIS is a comprehensive event for each of the industries it represents. Thus, in the recent event, there were Laundrex India, Waste Technology India Expo, and the Autocare Expo to represent the laundry, waste management, and automotive care industry segments, respectively. Each of those industries had its separate pavilions attracting a lot of attention from visitors.
Concurrent seminars at the CIS venue allowed participants to interact on subjects of interest to the FM industry.
The Integrated Facility Management Seminar was on the latest trends and challenges in facility management across workplaces.
The DigiFM conference was for identifying and connecting the FM industry to mechanization, automation, and digitization.
The hospitality Connect event sought to identify and implement housekeeping strategies with a transformed perspective.
The Clean India conference helped its audience identify effective and cost-efficient hygiene technologies for hospital safety and sustainability.
The CIS thus helps the visitors and conference participants to familiarise themselves with the requirements of the hospitality and healthcare industry, which are two major buyer segments of FM services, including pest control services.
Visiting the different stalls, I could see the wide range of equipment and technologies available to the FM industry. For example, if we have heard of autonomous passenger vehicles, I found autonomous cleaning equipment which operates without any driver and cleans and mops floors.
In the waste management industry pavilion, one participant had an automatic plastic sorting machine that could efficiently segregate plastics for resource recovery.
At the Indo Gulf Cleaning Company (Indo Gulf) stall, you could see videos of their cleaning robots that help determine the condition of ducts during an inspection. Subsequently, by use of appropriate equipment Indo Gulf uses robots clean and disinfect the ducts to improve the hygiene of the duct interiors vastly.
Indo Gulf is a PCO spin-off after the efforts to deploy robotic cameras to detect rodents inside ducts. Now, the Indo Gulf team uses robotic cameras to detect rodent entry points which they seal to prevent rodent activity. Next month, PCO Mentor shall carry a detailed article on this revolutionary new pest control technique developed by Indo Gulf Pest Control in rodent management.
Organizers of the CIS plan a pest control pavilion for future editions of the event to showcase our industry, which is an integral part of the cleaning industry. In addition, the CIS is a good forum for PMPs to learn about the cleaning industry trends which can impact the pest control industry.
Further, CIS-like events give the great opportunity to meet buyers, unlike events with participants only from the pest control industry. The next CIS is in Mumbai in November 2023, and I look forward to seeing more PMP colleagues at the event.