Security Industry Must Invest In Infrastructure And Upgrade

In the recently organised Outstanding Security Professional Awards India chapter Capt. Raghu Raman, Founder CEO NATGRID, Reliance Industries Distinguished Fellow ORF & Author, joined among other distinguished professionals of the security industry to elaborate on the present state the industry is reeling under and its prospects going forward. The chat chaired by Dr. Annurag Batra, CEO and Editor in Chief, BW Businessworld had been a specially intrigued discussion and brought out several aspects which are directly or indirectly causing an impact to the domain.

Capt. Raghu Raman said: “There is no doubt about the future of security domain per-se which is going to be bright definitely but whether the smaller companies in the security domain will be able to work on the transition is pretty doubtful. This situation happens only during paradigm shift which we are witnessing since past fifteen twenty years when we had ERPs foraying into the market. In the process many nationalised banks could not make the transition from brink and mortar manual mind-set to digital set up and have in the process been wiped out. Thus, To my mind these paradigm shift is actually going to cause a lot of char to the security industry and the MSMEs are going to be wiped out because the cash flow issues are only the tip of the ice-berg.”

Assuming that the wage bill will go up by 30 to 40 percent in the coming years, it is evidently going to impact the calibre of the work-force by a 30 to 40 percent increment. He further pointed out rightly the increased demand of security is going to increase the cost of acquiring staffs, besides increase in pension, and overall cost-structure. “As of now the entire industry had the same 50 to 55 thousand staffs who leave the army and other para-military forces and come into the gym pool every year. Assuming that only 50 percent of them want to work because of the post-covid economic crisis, this is the same pool of work force that the Punjab police is providing rehabilitation with a contract of another five or ten years and the same pool that the billionaires of the country are staffing their personal security staff, which will lead to the wage-bill to increase dramatically. This is because the supply of these troops which are not only constant but the availability of these troops will reduce over a period of time.”

Therefore, the private security industry needs to very consciously create infrastructure for training which currently only two or three players have, which is only a fraction of security expertise that is required.

In another instance, Capt. Raghu Raman further pointed out that in any industry the Chief Security Officer (CSO) or the person responsible for security of a company must belong to the C-Suite. “For a company which is larger than a mid-sized company worth about INR 10000 crores, one person in the CXO suite responsible for security of the company, they ought to be hired for anything between the ranges of INR 3 crores to INR 5 crores, however in actual they are not paid with these entitlements. Though named as a CXO or CSO, these professionals in the security industry or any industry are not valued aptly as per the market range are pegged at. Thus, for an individual to get into that space of market conditions, they need to understand the economy of the business they are looking to protect”, he asserted. 

Pointed out rightly, by Capt. Raghu Raman that when it is said that the expenditure in the security industry will raise the economy of the country, it is a shallow argument because no country’s