It’s rather apt that one meets veteran entrepreneur Deepak Pahwa on a day when Delhi’s air quality is particularly bad. His Pahwa group of companies, which includes the over 60-year-old Bry-Air, Desiccant Rotors International (DRI), DelAir and Technical Drying Services (TDS), is in the business of hi-tech air treatment and environmental control.
His companies are also into energy recovery and energy savings, particularly important areas in these volatile times, when the world is exceedingly conscious about energy consumption. The products from the group cater to sectors ranging from pharmaceuticals to advanced battery manufacturing.
Pahwa animatedly talks about the latest launch from Bry-Air — a dehumidifier specially developed for the pharma industry, which uses metal-organic frameworks (MOFs). The Nobel Prize for chemistry in 2025, he points out, was won by three scientists for MOFs, which are porous materials that can trap carbon dioxide. “We had been working on this technology for 13 years and just launched our first product incorporating MOFs,” says Pahwa, explaining how, for 35 years, the world has relied on silica gel as a desiccant for dehumidification. “With MOF technology you are saving 60 per cent energy, which is a giant leap, and our product has big applications in pharmaceutical and food factories,” he says.
It was pure chance that Pahwa, an electrical engineer from BHU, got into the niche of environmental control products. “Our innovations and technology development have somehow been focused on energy saving devices. We didn’t add those labels, but in the last 15 years we found the world’s attention on it, as sustainability became a buzzword,” he says. This explains why the group is in a good space now, and its products are found everywhere in the world, from China to North America and West Asia to Latin America.
The Origins
The flagship company of the Pahwa group is Bry-Air, which has an interesting history. It was founded in 1964 by Art Harms, a former sales representative at Bryant, a division of Carrier Corporation.
In 1981, Harms’ family entered into a joint venture with Pahwa to form Bry- Air Asia. “In 1999, they decided to cash out of the JV and thus we acquired the name for Asia,” says Pahwa.
But then in 2006, there was a management takeover of Bry-Air USA. “We part-funded that takeover,” says Pahwa, “and, in the process, we acquired the global name and licensed its use back to the person who bought it, with the provision and restriction that he could only use it in North America.” Last December, there was a sunset to the agreement — the Bry-Air business is now wholly with the Pahwa group.
“We have an organisation which is very innovation driven,” says Pahwa, describing how the company has filed over 130 patents (80 granted) for adsorbent and dehumidification technologies. An innovation he is betting big on is a unit (Taaza water) that can generate water from air — moisture from air is captured, its quantity enhanced and then condensed. “We expect a pretty interesting future for it in this water-stressed world,” he says.
At the moment, the units, which can produce 60 litres of water a day, are being distributed through NGOs to various small locations. Each unit is priced Rs. 1.5 lakh.
“We are working on larger systems designed to produce 1,000 litres an hour,” he says.
Which is the group’s hero product? “We have three products that have given us extensive recognition. One is our desiccant dehumidifiers. The second product is our energy recovery wheels. It rotates and transfers the energy. And the third product is a wheel, too — that is in the heart of every dehumidifier. In fact, the best of companies that make dehumidifiers in China buy the wheel from us in India — the core or gut is going from us,” he says.
There are also the energy recovery devices, made by DRI, which help maintain sufficient fresh air in occupied spaces without a punishing air-conditioning load, he says.
Climate Tech
Clocking revenues of around Rs. 1,000 crore, including overseas business, the group, with 1,900 employees, is working on futuristic technologies, Pahwa says. “Global warming has led to opportunities, as drastic measures are needed to reduce the carbon content in the atmosphere. People are scrambling to develop technologies for removal of carbon dioxide. Today, we are also working on advanced carbon dioxide capture technologies,” he says.
These climate mitigating technologies, he says, have applications in industries like cement factories, which emit a lot of carbon. “But we don’t want to get into the front end of that rat race. We are working on the core or the heart of what they will need.”
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