Mumbai: The Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s swachh bharat abhiyan has given a boost to cleaning equipment manufacturers who have increased their domestic production by 30 per cent.The multinational cleaning equipment manufacturers in the country are already expanding their production facilities, whilst new ones are coming in. Mohit Motani business development manager at SK Robotics said earlier suppliers of cleaning equipment were using 50 per cent of imported equipment but now they have increased their domestic production to 80 per cent.
A lot of foreign exchange has also been saved because of this. SK Robotics is the only company in India that uses robots for cleansing purposes and displayed its robot dustbin and robot for cleaning swimming pools at the India Engineering Sourcing Show (IESS), the flagship event of the EEPC India, on Tuesday.
Mr Motani said the biggest advantage of the Swachh Bharat movement is the fact that people in cooperative societies in Mumbai for instance are taking robots to the streets to clean their surroundings instead of waiting for the Municipal Corporation to clean the streets.
The whole idea, said Mr Motani, “is to get into every household to do cleaning and also provide security. Robots can do daily cleaning of the houses and also cooking, though this will take a while as the robots are still being developed at their R&D centre.”
SK Robotics has the capacity to produce 2,500 robots per month at their R&D and manufacturing centre in Vapi, Gujarat. They expect their production to increase by 70 per cent in the next 12 months. These floor cleaning robots cost anywhere between Rs7,500 to Rs 25,000. The swimming pool robot cleaner costs Rs1.25 lakh.
The company’s 10 litre dustbins with security features, the first robot dustbin in the country, will be used in 60 railway station platforms across North India.
Once it runs successfully, Mr Motani expects Maharashtra and the South will also use robots on railway platforms. They are already in use on the Sabarmati River Front in Ahmedabad over nine kms.
