XBHP THINK TALKS MR GIRDHARI CHANDAK

Managing Director, Axor Helmets and Vega

xBhp: What are your thoughts on the current motorcycling scene considering the COVID-19 pandemic that we have on hand which has taken on the form of a global crisis? We’ve heard that you are working towards providing PPEs to the people on the frontlines.

Mr Girdhari Chandak: As you already know, we have been into making safety gears for around a couple of decades. The current situation, it is bothersome to say the least. It has brought the world to a standstill and saying that we have never seen anything like this in recent times, won’t be entirely wrong. I would say that change of times require changes all around and PPEs were the need of the hour for the people who are on the frontlines in the war against this pandemic.

Doctors, policemen, health workers, essential service providers and so on are putting themselves on the line to tackle this situation and we felt like we needed to do something. One of my friends who is a doctor told me that people need PPEs and asked me if there was something that we could do. We asked them what exactly they’d like to have and he gave us a couple of ideas. And that is how it started.

We had a couple of doctors over at the factory we started working. We already manufacture visors for helmets so that was a start. The doctors worked with our R&D team and we worked for 20 hours a day for a week. The result was a protective shield made of polycarbonate. It is clear, it can be sterilized or sanitized and so we were happy with the final product.

It was approved by the doctors and we even sent a few samples to the Tata Cancer Hospital in Mumbai and got fantastic reviews for it. Post that we started supplying the shield to the hospitals in Bangalore, Mumbai, and Belgaum in addition to sending it to the police department as well.