Gloves Off: Enliva’s Mission to Replace Imports with Innovation

Shahid Akhter, Consulting Editor, FEHealthcare, spoke to Anindith Reddy, Managing Director and Co-Founder, Enliva, to figure out the challenges faced by the Indian glove industry and how the vision of Atmanirbhar Bharat needs a relook to boost the Make in India initiative.

 

Q1 The current state of India’s glove manufacturing industry and what are the challenges the Indian gloves industry currently faces. 

The Indian Rubber glove industry is valued at ~$800 million, projected growth to ~$1.2 billion by 2028, with an anticipated CAGR of 8.5%. Historically, the glove manufacturing in India has witnessed Surgical Natural Rubber Glove manufacturers, primarily located in Kerala and have been manufacturing primarily for exports. Examination gloves have always been imported owing to large capital requirements and need to be manufactured at scale. 

 

Post covid there was a huge rise in demand for examination gloves both Natural Rubber & Nitrile Rubber. Realising India’s dependency on imports and with a vision to create a sufficiency for the nation, Wadi Surgicals set up a Nitrile Glove manufacturing facility with India’s most advanced glove manufacturing capability and the largest production capacity. Today there are about 26 Natural Rubber glove manufacturers and 4 Nitrile glove manufacturers in India. 

 

It is to be noted that India has been a dumping ground for gloves - B-grade reject examination gloves, from countries like Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam, because of poor import regulations. The gloves are being imported in gunny bags and are packaged. Roughly about 600 to 800 crore rupees worth of gloves are being imported in a year at a price lower than cost of manufacturing anywhere in the world. Last month alone, 11 crore gloves were imported. Moreover, these imported gloves are chlorinated and specifically banned by the biomedical waste rules, 2016. It is also to be noted that Indian manufacturers are not allowed to use chlorination in manufacturing and so Indian manufacturers use polymer instead at a higher price.  Close to 120 crore pieces of gloves which are chlorinated are being dumped in our landfills in the country.

Implementation of QCO

The Indian gloves manufacturers have been advocating for the implementation of the QCO - Medical and Surgical Gloves Quality Control Order and anti-dumping duty. Once there is a standardization and a system in place, we can curb the illegal dumping as well as check the influx of chlorinated gloves in the country. The QCO is taking time and the delay in implementation is making the industry bleed, it’s a big threat to the growth and competitiveness of our domestic manufacturers who are supporting the vision of Atmanirbhar Bharat and Make in India initiative. This new QCO will directly impact the average annual import of ₹450–500 crore worth of such illegal products, ensuring only safe and certified gloves enter the Indian market. With the implementation of the required regulations and checks, the industry will be better regulated. 

 

Q2. Insights on Market size 

India’s glove market currently accounts for 5% of the global market size which is on track to grow to $28 billion by 2030. Rising healthcare needs and expanding industrial applications are some of the key factors.  India administers 5.5 billion injections per day, thus creating a demand for 11 billion gloves daily with two gloves per injection. However, the country is heavily reliant on imports which make for ~85% of the market. 

 

Q3. Tell us about Enliva– how did you build India’s largest glove manufacturing facility? How are you competing with global giants? Future projections, roadmap? 

Enliva was born out of a crisis in India’s glove manufacturing. During the height of the Covid pandemic, we understood how dependent India was on other countries—particularly Malaysia and China for gloves. That was a turning point for me and my co-founders Shaaz Mehmood and Ishaan Dodhiwala. We realized that India needed to build its own high-quality, globally competitive manufacturing capability. And that’s where the idea for Enliva started taking shape and we established India’s first and fastest double-former double-dipping nitrile glove manufacturing line at our manufacturing facility in Andhra Pradesh Medtech Zone, Vishakhapatnam.  We entered the market amidst stiff global competition. But we’re actively moving into a brownfield expansion by adding two additional production lines by the end of current financial year and are also planning a greenfield expansion across locations in coming years. These steps are part of our larger vision to build a distributed, resilient manufacturing capacity, placing us alongside global leaders like Hartalega and Ansell.  So now we are not just focusing on meeting India’s domestic demand but also to establish the country as a global manufacturing hub for gloves for regions such as North Africa, Middle East, UK and Africa.