Hicare Services Pvt. Ltd., a pest management company, is focusing on emerging areas of air purifying and house cleaning to grow its business fourfold in three years, a top official said.
“We entered the home-cleaning and air-purification business recently and these areas offer tremendous growth opportunities. We are now focusing on these,” said Himanshu Chakrawarti, chief executive officer, Hicare Services.
The company, which was set up by the Godrej group in 2004 is now owned by private equity firm True North, formerly Indian Value Fund. It entered the air-purifier business in February this year, with services in NCR-Delhi.
“We have got a fair amount of success in NCR. Starting April, we are rolling out this service nationally,” Mr. Chakrawarti said.
Partnering Swedish major Blueair, Hicare will offer air-purifying machines on rent and related service packages to households and businesses in key cities.
This segment is at a nascent stage with an estimated 2,50,000 units installed nationally by all service providers. Industry watchers said that prospects for growth are high considering the rising air pollution in several cities, mainly in north India.
Hicare is also diversifying into home hygiene services.
A year ago, the company forayed into bird-control services. Home-cleaning services, targeted at higher middle-class and rich customers, is being offered in seven cities across India.
Flying insects
As part of its pest-control business, Hicare has recently begun mosquito-control services which is slated to grow fast.
“Mosquito is the biggest pest category today. This segment is bigger than all the pest [segments] combined together. We have been controlling crawling insects all these years, now we have added flying insects and expect large revenue from this service,” Mr. Chakrawarti said.
India’s pest control market is estimated at ₹6000 crore and is dominated by local players from the unorganized sector. Pest Control India (PCI) is the biggest player followed by Hicare.
Hicare with a turnover of around ₹100 crore has operations in 150 cities providing service to 200,000 households and 10,000 commercial enterprises including Mumbai International airport, Hyderabad airport and Starbuck stores.
The company directly and indirectly employs over 2,500 people and has been growing at 30 to 35% per year as against industry growth of 10 to 12%. At this rate of growth and with addition of new services, the company targets a turnover of ₹400 crore in 2020, Mr.Chakrawarti said.
