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Journalism of Courage
A small pouch, carrying the warning ‘Do Not Eat’, pops out of the most unlikely places – a pack of medicine strips, a chocolate box, a nutraceutical jar. For those who were never curious enough to Google the importance of the pouch, Manish Jain is the person to ask. He will tell you that these are desiccant pouches that can control moisture and odour, and keep the product free of mould and other effects of humidity.
In India, the desiccant pouches are manufactured by Jain’s company, Cilicant Pvt Ltd, which is valued at more than Rs 2o0 crore. The company also produces desiccant canisters to protect a wide range of pharmaceuticals and nutraceuticals, and Accuflips that regulate the relative humidity within a specified range to protect a product, among others.
“From the very beginning of my career, I always knew I wanted to do something big in the desiccant business. Back then, ‘active packaging’ was a fairly new term for me. While in the market, I learned that the pharmaceutical industry uses a lot of desiccants, and there was a need for high-quality products. It was surprising to discover that India, a country known to manufacture and export life-saving medicines to the world, still had to be dependent on imports for something as basic as silica gel and active packaging,” says Jain.
Jain secured the necessary documentation for the products, including United States Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) approvals, and went ahead to build a world-class facility to bridge this market gap.
He used to be known as the ‘Silica Gel Wala’ when the bootstrapped company started in 2011. It was a small team of less than 50 people, working out of a modest set-up. They made around Rs 5 crore in turnover in 2011-2012. Today, it is a 500-plus team.
“When we started Cilicant, the market was already using traditional desiccants like silica gel, molecular sieve, and activated carbon. But, during our customer discussions, we would often learn about certain formulations and specific challenges that could not be resolved using the traditional desiccants. That’s when we realised the only way forward for us was to co-create. Our team would sit with our customers to understand their formulation-specific challenges and then develop active packaging solutions to resolve them. That’s how we developed many of our flagship products such as Frexil, Accuflip, Cilicant Oxabide, and Accuvita,” he says.
Jain mentions that understanding the customers’ problems and working closely with them to find a solution has played a pivotal role in the growth of Cilicant.
The company has now crossed Rs 170 crore in revenue, and the products serve a purpose that is unseen by most end users. In pharma, moisture and oxygen can degrade a formulation.
“Frexil, Accuflip, and our traditional desiccants work well for these applications,” says Jain. In food, oxygen exposure can turn a sweet or snack rancid much before its time. This is where oxygen absorbers come in to enhance the shelf life of products, especially for products they export. Another product, Davsorb, is a high-capacity moisture absorber that finds wide application in the textile and leather industries. Cilicant has also developed specific solutions for electronics, automotive, and agriculture sectors.
“Did you know shipping containers, too, require a special kind of desiccant? Our Cilicant 270 is used by exporters to protect their products from “container rain” – the phenomenon caused by condensation of water droplets in the interior surfaces of a container, which can damage the goods inside during sea shipment,” says Jain.
The company has built a portfolio of solutions, each product designed with a specific application in mind. “The common thread across all of them is simple – extending shelf life naturally, without unnecessary additives or preservatives,” he says.
The manufacturing facilities are in Pune, though Cilicant has expanded its global footprint, with offices in the US and France. “We are catering to the US, Europe, and Southeast Asia markets,” says Jain.
He adds that they will soon launch several products “that we’ve been working on for quite some time”.
“Innovation for us is not about chasing novelty — it’s about relevance. If our customer sees value, that’s when we know it’s worth the effort,” Jain concludes.
