THE QUEST FOR TERRIFIC AIR!

A company active in the real estate business was looking for an air disinfection system to be deployed in its campuses. When it could not find an appropriate solution in India, it decided to develop and manufacture the system on its own. Ankit Sharma, Director, Airific Systems Pvt. Ltd. shares the journey with The Machinist

- Niranjan Mudholkar

What was the motivation behind this start-up and how has been the journey since then?

Well, to answer this question, I would need to go even further back. I am an engineer, by education, from The University of Texas at Austin, and therefore as you can imagine technology has always been at the forefront of what I decide to do. We, as a family, have other businesses in the commercial real estate field, and we also develop and market building and energy management systems. Advant Navis Business Park, one of our campuses present in sector 142, Noida, has always been ahead of time with the technology deployed within the campus. UVGI systems for air disinfection is something we always discussed as a company to implement within our campuses, but for one reason or the other, it never came to fruit, until COVID-19 struck. It quickly became apparent how important it is to disinfect the air that we breathe in indoor environments, and unfortunately (or fortunately for me) there were no organized players here in India that developed such systems, and the ones abroad were too busy with their own internal requirements. It was then that we decided that we will manufacture our own systems, develop our own design software, and provide clean air to as many people as we can, because everyone deserves to breathe free and I must say it has been a fun journey ever since!

Airific is a rather ‘different’ name. What does it mean and what is its genesis?

I quite like the name Airific. It is actually a combination of two words, the word ‘Air’ and the word ‘terrific’, and I think that’s the end goal for us, we want to provide ‘terrific air’ quality to everyone, therefore I think the name is quite apt.