Laugh, learn and sip safe — catch the Ashirvad Aqualife+ TVC now!
Clean drinking water is essential, but have you ever wondered about the pipes that carry it?
Our new TVC for Ashirvad Aqualife+ shines the spotlight on the hidden risks and the importance of smarter plumbing choices. Through a light-hearted and relatable story, we deliver a serious message: When it comes to your family’s health, ignorance isn’t bliss — it’s a risk. Introducing India’s 1st Anti-microbial uPVC pipe powered by silver ion technology, Aqualife+ is designed to prevent the growth of harmful microbes inside your pipes, ensuring safer water from tank to tap.
Watch our TVC now and see how Ashirvad is redefining the future of water purity — one home at a time.
Discover how we’re shaping a sustainable future through innovation, performance and purpose-driven growth.
The pioneer of CPVC, uPVC, PVC technologies in the plumbing industry in India has introduced measures to support the local community in the face of the pandemic. “The global pandemic hit all of us hard, but it was specifically harsh on the more vulnerable sections of society. To play our part in alleviating some of the pain, we have taken a three-pronged approach to reach out to all stakeholders- our people, our partners and our communities. In a short span of time, Ashirvad, set up a robust supply chain for sanitizers, hands-free dispensers, safety kits, and face-shields for our employees and channel partners.” emphasized Deepak Mehrotra, Managing Director, Ashirvad Pipes Pvt. Ltd. “ We felt like this was our duty towards the ecosystem that has supported us at every step over the last 50 years. It was time we gave back”
Ashirvad has always maintained a strong community connection; it was one of the founding principles of the company right from the early days when the reigns of control rested with the Poddar family. These values have been thoughtfully transitioned and carried forward by the Aliaxis group which acquired sole ownership of the company in 2018.
Internally, the company has introduced various team-building initiatives to keep morale high during the prolonged pandemic. “Building on the ‘Hum Ashirvadi’ initiative, we took a holistic approach to address all aspects of employee wellbeing through a completely digital platform. Ashirvad Care Team (ACT) consisting of Happiness Champions was formulated to extend post-COVID support to help our employees recover from the pandemic, both physically and mentally. During the deeply traumatic COVID year of 2020, we introduced a bouquet of innovative measures that were designed to offer a secure and friendly environment to our employees, to enable them to find their work-life balance; be it ‘work from home’ or office, the safety and comfort of each employee was our driving sentiment.” Radha Ramanujan, the CFO of Ashirvad quips passionately. “A case in point is a simple courtesy such as discouraging employees to send out emails over weekends, because, being a caring organization, we have tremendous respect for people’s free time” she explains.
Other inspiring initiatives by the plumbing behemoth include :
‘Wellness On The Web’ (WOW) -a digital platform enabled them to have free access to medical help, of any kind whatsoever, be it a doctor, dietician, or physio-therapist.
Our “Nurturing Lives Policy” – an initiative aimed at ensuring that all medical expenses were borne by the Organization.
Flexible work from home policies – a drive that implemented continuity of business operations while allowing for flexibility in the remote workforce.
Employee Assistance Program (EAP) – a thoughtful program formulated to help employees solve personal and work-related problems. These included 24/7 helplines via Video/ Audio and Chat portals, enabling all to have access to well-qualified therapists for themselves and their families.
Family Connect – A series of virtual competitions for different age groups leading to greater family participation and bonding while enhancing the family connection and bonding.
Sunil Banthiya came on board as Chief Operations Officer during the transition of Ashirvad to Aliaxis, together with Managing Director Deepak Mehrotra. He focuses on the company’s entire supply chain management: procurement, production planning, logistics and distribution. “Ensuring business continuity during the transition was a key priority,” he says.
Business continuity as key priority
After the arrival of the new COO, the first concern was to guarantee a continued service and flawless product deliveries to Ashirvad’s clients and distributors. Sunil Banthiya confirms and adds that “it is only the start of our path forward towards building a customer-centric supply chain.”
“The main goals for us are to continue to drive productivity, work towards higher service levels for our customers and build good systems and processes within our organisation, which will enable us to achieve sustainable growth.”
Geographical expansion
According to the COO, supply chain is an important enabler for business growth, for example by expanding the manufacturing footprint.
“Opening our new facility at Bhiwadi, in the north, was a very important step in that direction. It allowed us to reduce costs in the area of logistics and to improve service lead time. This has led to more confidence among our distributors. Being a greenfield plant, we were able to leverage our past learnings to implement high standards in terms of technology, operational efficiency and workplace organisation. This has resulted in a vertical ramp-up of plant capacity.”
“The successes of the new plant give us the confidence to expand our manufacturing footprint: we are building a Bhiwadi phase two facility and are looking to increase our geographical presence with a manufacturing plant in the east.”
Focus on active and long-term partnerships
Another major challenge for Sunil Banthiya is the optimization of the end to end supply chain to improve customer service. “We are shifting from a transactional way of working with our vendors, business partners and customers to one which is focused on developing active and long-term partnerships. We want to understand where our products are being used at the end-customer level to shift from a product-selling to solutions-selling mindset. Every stakeholder is involved in that process: distributors, retail partners and end-customers.”
Implementing new health and safety standards
“During the coming year, we will continue to invest in our existing plants to upgrade their capacity, safety standards and infrastructure. We are putting a lot of effort and focus into optimising our production processes and implementing new standards on health and safety,” says Sunil Banthiya. “One important milestone of this past year, for example, was the implementation of a new ERP system that enables us to integrate our different legacy systems and makes our organisation future-proof.”
“In the domain of health and safety, we are implementing a cultural change about how we look at safety through active employee engagement. Formerly, we only looked at lagging indicators that monitored our safety performance, but we are now moving to leading indicators such as capturing all “Near Miss” incidents. It is our ambition to improve our safety performance proactively by implementing a set of key initiatives that promote safe behaviour and eliminate unsafe conditions at work.”