Jajoo Hygiene
A/002 Praneel Apartment
Opp. Eskay Resort, Link Road
Borivli (West)
Mumbai 400103 India
Tel: +91 (22) 28944848
Fax: +91 9819130090
Email: [email protected]

Last month, Jajoo Surgical, Indore, India and Sweden-based Investkonsult, officially opened their joint venture, Jajoo Hygiene. The new company will manufacture underpads and maternity pads for the hospital and institution market segment in India.

A maker of hygienic medical supplies in India since 1993, Jajoo Hygiene’s product portfolio includes the brands Pro JS Care Underpad Regular; Pro JS Care Underpad Premium; Pro JS Care Booster pad; and Pro JS Care Maternity pad. Meanwhile, Investkonsult is a broker of used equipment used in the production of nonwovens and hygiene prdoucts.

According to Johan Berlin of Investkonsult, the two companies began communicating in 2012 and soon established they could both benefit from combining Jajoo’s know-how in the Indian institutional and hospital markets with Investkonsult’s competence in equipment and machinery. Soonafter, company executives Visnu Jajoo and Pankaj Jajoo traveled to Europe to see existing underpad lines with Berlin. The joint venture was formally established in 2013 and the equipment was shipped from Sweden (and Saudi) during the summer of 2013.

The Jajoo family has extensive knowledge of the institutional and hospital markets in India as they have been supplying products—mainly bleached cotton—to these markets for a long period of time.

“The Jajoo Surgicals company had something we had not previously found when we talked with other Indian companies —namely the know-how to sell and market a product such as underpads,” Berlin says. “All the other companies we spoke to had a background in conventional textiles and none of them understood the vast market potential in India and all of them thought that this was a product they would make in India and export to Europe. Nothing could be more wrong of course. The potential for underpads in India is huge, but unless you know how to sell to the hospitals and other institutions—often by tender—it’s impossible to gain a market share.”

Meanwhile, Investkonsult’s experience in the machinery business and extremely vast network of freelance consultants has proven invaluable for starting up the line, Berlin adds. “We had at first a retired U.S.-specialist who laid the groundwork and also assured us of the fact that we could make this work from a technical aspect.”

This man, Frank Neal, made three trips to India to help with re-erection, alignment and set-up of the lines. During the last four months the company used a specialist from Finland, who actually worked on the line in Finland before it was shut-down, to handle the commissioning and startup of the line.

“Our experience in running a company according to European standards with minimum waste and maximum efficiency will hopefully also spill over to Jajoo Hygiene and we are implementing a code of conduct to be as per European standards in our new facility,” Jajoo explains.

The first line comprises a CCE drum former and hammer mill capable of making underpads in three sizes while the second line, from Dambi, is capable of producing booster pads to be used with any brand or size of adult diapers or maternity pads.

Initially, a major part of the business will be from India. Within India the focus is on a pan India presence initially covering metropolitan areas and Tier 2 cities followed with a presence in Tier 3 cities where the product currently doesn’t has major volumes.

“When it comes to business outside India, the inital focus will be on fast growing neighboring countries of southeast and central Asia,” says Rakesh Jajoo. “The focus would also be on locating specific distributors in other continents where focus is on developing long term quality brand preposition rather than short term price competition.”