Celebrating 65 years of success

The medical industry is constantly evolving and improving. To keep up with the latest advances in technology and provide the best possible care for patients, hospitals must have high-quality medical devices. Hindustan Syringes & Medical Devices (HMD) aims to provide affordable and top-quality products that ensure the safety of healthcare workers and patients. As a reputed pioneer in the healthcare industry, HMD has gained the unwavering trust of people worldwide. Here is a glimpse of how HMD started and the milestones achieved in the last 65 years.

How it all started
Established on August 2, 1957, HMD is the brainchild initiative of late Narindra Nath, who started his career as a pharmacist in Lahore and then moved to Delhi in 1947, and opened Nath Bros Chemist. He realized India needed to be Atmanirbhar and freed from import dependence and the basic medical device in every doctor’s tool bag was a glass syringe, which he decided to make. The company’s creation was primarily fueled by the demands of safe and high-quality affordable healthcare delivery. He reached out to the head of a Japanese delegation visiting India and through him got introduced to Tsubasa Industry in Japan, and that led to the first technical collaboration between a Japanese and Indian company and establishment of a factory at Faridabad. Later, he took steps to upgrade the manufacturing processes with higher automated and precision Italian technology to produce interchangeable glass syringes and thereafter introduced surgical blades.

HMD’s contribution in the war against Covid-19
Predicting a spike in demand, in April 2020 itself, HMD started to rapidly ramp up its capacity and re-engineered the standard disposable syringes lines to manufacture in their place AD syringe for vaccination. HMD initiated in May 2020 an investment of over USD 15 million (approx. ₹100 crore) from their own resources, without government support to mass produce specialty syringes even before purchase orders were in sight. A similar second round of investment of another over ₹100 crore was done in 2021-22.

HMD has supplied 740 million 0.5-mL AD syringes to Government of India by April 2022 to help vaccinate over 950 million people to support the massive vaccination campaign to eradicate Covid-19 and help make India Atmanirbhar. In addition, HMD exported approximately 400 million AD syringes to COVAX and PAHO in 2021-2022 and nearly 50 million disposable syringes to Japan and over 30 million syringes to Brazil for Covid-19 vaccination in addition to supplies to many other countries.

HMD alone contributes to over 65 percent of AD syringe supplies in India for immunization. Presently, HMD is producing more than 4.75 lakh syringes of various types per hour at their factories spread over 11 acres in Faridabad industrial district in Haryana.

Milestones achieved over the years
HMD has been introducing innovative products in the market that ensure the safety and wellbeing of patients and healthcare workers. Over four decades, HMD created a niche for their disposable syringe – DispoVan – which is today the most popular brand in syringe market in India with over 60-percent market share with DispoVan needle and DispoVan insulin syringes having over 70-percent market share, and thereby displacing renowned MNCs – an inspirational case study for other Indian entrepreneurs.

In addition to various kinds of syringes and needles, HMD introduced some other drug-delivery products like IV cannulas (catheters), scalp vein infusion sets and blood collection systems, and surgical blades and scalpels, including innovative sharp injury prevention features, as sought by its international buyers in USA and Europe.

Currently, HMD is a hospital medical disposable supplier to more than 120 countries from Europe, South East Asia, the Middle East, South America, and the US. Besides, HMD operates overseas with two international subsidiaries, HMD Healthcare in the US and HMD Healthcare in the UK. Today, the company holds an annual turnover nearing USD 120 million.

HMD has set up more than nine highly automated plants, employing over 4000 people, and has a nationwide customer base of more than 5000 dealers. All its MDSAP- and ICMED-certified products are manufactured as per ISO 13485 QMS systems and comply with the European CE and USFDA regulatory requirements.

Vision ahead
A new 150,000 sq. ft. factory as a green field project was commissioned in February 2022 to increase capacity from 4 billion cannulas (needle points) per annum to 6 billion per annum and produce over 600 km of tubing daily. HMD is coming up with more designs of novel safety-engineered drug-delivery products in the near future, e.g., for nasal vaccine delivery that does not need a needle and some that need a needle but do not need a syringe.

The constant endeavor to provide high-quality products at affordable prices has helped HMD to earn the trust of people worldwide and to gain presence in 100+ countries. Apart from this, HMD Healthcare is equally responsible in saving the environment, which is why the trustworthy brand has rolled out a lot of sustainability projects in order to help the environment, including certified green building factories.