India produces 10% of the World’s Chemicals

Sandhya Group Carries on a 30 year Tradition of Quality

Charles Goodyear Developed Vulcanization after an Extraordinarily Difficult Journey.


SandAll of Sadhya's chemical plants are ISO certified

Sandhya Group is an industry leading chemical producer in western India.  With four manufacturing plants and a research laboratory, Sandhya Group has become a reference for quality and continuous improvement through sustainable growth, and has won numerous awards for its commitment to quality in the chemical industry.


Charles Goodyear, Amateur Chemist and Innovator


Chemistry was the passion of Charles Goodyear’s life.  His story is one of extraordinary perseverance in the face of repeated failure and poverty.  He spent many stints in debtor’s prison, and never became rich from any of his patents.  Nonetheless, he developed a process for vulcanizing rubber which revolutionized the industry and transformed manufacturing around the world.


Rubber is native to the Americas, and indigenous people used it to make balls and for waterproofing fabrics.  Christopher Columbus described it, and Europeans used it to make erasers and rubber bands.  Its use was limited, however, by the fact that it was so sticky it was hard to work with, and that it melted during hot summer weather and turned brittle in cold winter weather.  Goodyear, a devoutly religious man who had just lost everything in a failed business, became interested in the problem of chemically altering rubber in order to improve its qualities in the summer of 1834, at the age of 34.  In fact, Goodyear conducted his first experiments on rubber while in debtors’ prison.


In his autobiography, Charles Goodyear wrote that he believed he was on a mission from God.  Over the next five years he made some progress on the stickiness problem, the melting problem and the rigidity problem, trying dozens of chemical processes.  He had just enough success to attract investors from time to time, who eventually lost all of their money in enterprises founded to exploit the material.  Not only did Goodyear repeatedly find himself periodically in debtors’ prison, but he had to sell most of the family belongings, many of which he replaced with rubber objects.


Lack of money was not the only stress suffered by the Goodyear family.  Six of his twelve children did not survive childhood.  They moved approximately once per year, begged for food, and camped in abandoned buildings.  But his devoted wife and family gave him the support he needed to continue his experiments.  His famously gentle nature surely helped.


In 1839, after five long years of curing the malodorous substance in his wife’s kitchen, Goodyear discovered that a red hot stove would vulcanize the rubber instantly after being treated in a sulphur bath.    Because he had exhausted the money and patience of all of his friends and potential investors, it was another five years before he had perfected the process sufficiently to receive a patent, and Goodyear died sixteen years later still a poor man.   


The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. was named after Charles Goodyear when it was founded nearly 40 years after his death, but no one in the Goodyear family was ever involved with the company.  Although Goodyear died poor in part because of terrible business deals he made with his 60+ patents, his heirs eventually became modestly well off from royalties.


Goodyear was an inventor who worked with chemicals.  Since those days in the mid-nineteenth century the chemical industry has changed a lot, but the importance of sacrifice, hard work and attention to detail and quality remain the same.


An Industry Leader is Born in India


Exactly 150 years after Goodyear began experimenting with rubber, halfway around the globe chemists started what would become the Sandhya Group, a company which today operates in a wide range of industry segments in Industrial Chemicals, Pharmaceutical, Bulk Drugs, Agrochemical, Dyestuff, Paints, Polymer, Adhesive industries, Lubricants, Plastics, Rubber, Oil Exploration, and Many more.


Sandhya’s beginnings were modest, as a local company producing phosphorous compounds for industry.  As the company expanded, its leaders never forgot the lessons they learned about quality and commitment to superior customer service.  The result was that the company expanded into agricultural chemicals, pesticides, defoamers and other specialty chemicals that have made Sandhya a leader in India in chemical manufacture.  Today, India provides 10% of the world’s chemicals, and Sandhya is the largest phosphate compound producer in India.


A Commitment to Quality




Quality at Sandhya does not come by accident.  The company has  an independent Corporate Quality Assurance department tasked with oversight of quality at the company.  Their duties include validating existing systems and controls, handling complaints, supervising corrective and preventative actions, looking after human resources development, technology upgrades, and regulatory compliance.  The result of these and other quality improvement measures is ISO 9001:2008 Certification earned in all four manufacturing facilities the company operates.



ISO is not the only organization to recognize quality at Sandhya.  The company has also received the Global Indian Award, Quality Brand India Award, Rajiv Gandhi Siromani Award, and the Chemexcil Award for Best Export Company.


Total Quality also comes from continuous improvement.  Sandhya is continually looking for new opportunities through innovation.  And for that, Sandhya has a 5,000 square foot Research and Development facility fully equipped with cutting edge technology and staffed with dedicated researchers who invent and analyze the latest materials and techniques.  This is an applied research facility whose purpose is to improve the performance of the members of Sandhya Group.


Doing Well by Doing Good


Sandhya Group takes Corporate Social Responsibility seriously and invests its resources in a variety of educational, environmental, entrepreneurship, women’s empowerment and other groups.  Sandhya provides financial assistance for school construction, sponsors eye camps, donates computers and scholarship money to poor students, promotes sporting events for youngsters, and promotes environmental awareness and responsibility.


Sandhya Group has demonstrated that sustainable growth is possible through continuous improvement, innovation, and a culture of quality.  Because of its commitment to continuous quality improvement,Sandhya Group has been selected  to receive the BID World Quality Commitment Award for 2015 at the convention in Paris.

About BID and the World Quality Commitment Award:




