Indian plants queue up for Lindstrom workwear

He could be sitting thousands of miles away at his corporate headquarters in Finland but Juha Laurio is keeping a close watch on India.

The President & CEO of Lindstrom knows only too well that the country is a key growth lever for his 166-year-old group which specialises in supplying workwear to companies worldwide.

Lindstrom has been in India for seven years now with service centres spread across Assam, Gujarat Delhi, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Punjab. These are the supply points for clean uniforms to workers in different user industries. There is a rental fee for workwear and the centres take care of their mending, washing and maintenance.

“We are very happy with the India business and see good growth for Lindstrom. This is a huge market where the number of employees across (customer) companies is on the rise,” Laurio told Business Line during a recent visit.

Lindstrom is growing at 40-50 per cent annually in India and is increasingly using the intellectual resources in the country for its global operations. A section of employees is already part of management training programmes at the Finland headquarters. This is in addition to exchange programmes planned where there will be a constant flow of people coming to India as part of an effort to better understand work processes.

“People in this country are hungry for success and that is what is driving them to excel,” Laurio says. It is amply clear to him that a lot of action is happening in Asia with China and India, in particular, seeing “nice growth which is good news for us”.

Lindstrom is also on track with its Vision 2016 which will see 25 countries being part of the global roadmap. There are already 23 in place and the list should be complete next year with perhaps the new additions happening in the Asia-Pacific region.

“I have no hesitation in saying that India is one of the top markets for Lindstrom and its stature will only grow in the coming years. We are now working on Vision 2020 which will fuel more opportunities through this decade,” Laurio says.

According to Anupam Chakrabarty, MD of the Indian operations, workwear could have been a new concept in India when Lindstrom first set up shop in 2007 but things have changed quite rapidly.

“Today, companies appreciate the importance of hygiene and safety for workers as well as their image especially when they are part of a larger global arena with stricter regulations in place,” he says. Many companies prefer to outsource their entire workwear management to Lindstrom which is a specialist in this field.

The industries which the Finnish group is focusing on are primarily food, pharmaceuticals, healthcare, automobiles and fast moving consumer goods. These are sectors where the demand for workwear is expected to increase rapidly in the future.

In the coming years, Lindstrom will look at establishing business units within 200 kilometres of these service centres. This will help access smaller towns which are seeing rapid growth and set the pace for a gradual expansion in operations to smaller regions.

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