Shahid Akhter, editor, ETHealthworld spoke to Dr (ex-Capt.) Arvind Poswal, Director, Dr A’s Clinic, New Delhi, to understand the challenges in hair transplant industry.
Hair care Scenario
Today hair care is a multi-billion dollar industry world over. In India also people are looking more into restoring their own hair. This industry is going to leap bound with incoming researches like stem cell research etc.
Hair care challenges
The hair care industry is full of challenges: First, People do not know about the harmful content in the products that they are applying. Secondly, they do not understand which treatment will actually work for them and which are going to harm them? Which products to apply? What to eat? What lifestyle to keep? People are losing hair at a younger age. The problem is the trend that the multinationals are actually giving you products in a way which are actually harming your hair unless you learn to read the ingredients, learn to know which is the harmful one for your hair and which is good for your hair. So don’t go by blind advertisement.
Because people do not know what toxins penetrate through body care products sold by the MNCs. We have come up with a free app which anyone can use and see whether there are any toxins in those products and switch over to safer body care products. Today our main focus shall be on hair transplants as it is a burgeoning industry and everyday you see more and more people entering into this field. Now this is the concept where one has to understand how come there is such mushrooming of centres and understand that hair transplant is not primarily a surgery but an art and unless the art is perfected by the doctor or centre you cannot get the best results.
The hair transplant industry is going to see a billion dollar boom in the coming decade in India. The biggest fraud is that any doctor can legally claim to do hair transplant without any training. There is no legal framework which is going to stop the doctors from doing hair transplants. Unless the doctors are properly trained they will keep on reinventing the wheel and keep on spoiling the patients and the industry.
Dr A’s Clinic as differentiator
We have invented a technique where we take out roots from one area and transplant to another area. Then the transplanted hair keeps growing for the rest of their lives. In 2006, it was our clinic which did the world’s first documented beard hair to scalp transplant and that way they opened up the flood gates where people could use only 2500 or 3000 hair follicle for transplant. Going from bald to semi bald, only with the beard they could cover the entire head and it was a game changing scenario.
The moment you shift from toxic products to non toxic products, there is a lot of improvement within 6 months in the overall health including the hair? That is where it is important to go for natural products and go for a detox.
We are hoping that within a year we shall have 50 full-fledged centres of hair transplant including another 50 centres in tier 2 cities which shall have only detox free body care products which do not harm in any way. We are also looking into how laser can help people regrow their hair without having any side effects from medicines.
