In an industry dominated by multinational giants, ICARE Lifts is carving a distinct identity—not by competing on volume, but by solving what others can’t. Since its rebranding in 2022, the company has quietly built a reputation for custom-engineered solutions in compact and challenging spaces, from construction hoists and firemen’s evacuation lifts to glass cabins and home elevators. In this exclusive edition of Manufacturer’s Diary, Omckar Desae, Managing Director of ICARE Lifts, speaks with H&B Magazine about why installation quality matters more than components, why the right to service is under threat, and why the industry’s biggest problem isn’t technology—it’s execution.
Q. ICARE Lifts has been building its presence in India’s evolving vertical mobility sector. What was the original vision, and how has it evolved?
ICARE Lifts took its present shape in 2022, when my mentor Mukesh Kanodra retired and I rebranded the business. The vision was simple: specialise in customised lifts for compact and challenging spaces, and back them with real quality and service.
Today we offer the complete range— from temporary to permanent lifts. Construction hoists, firemen’s evacuation lifts, car lifts, home lifts, and commercial lifts, including combination packages for a single project. We take on the solutions MNCs don’t. That makes us a genuine full-range local alternative to them.
Q. India’s cities are growing vertically at an unprecedented pace. What are the biggest changes you expect in the elevator industry over the next five to ten years?
Three changes.
First, regulation. IS 17900, based on the European EN 81-20/50 safety code, is now mandatory for new installations. This raises the safety baseline for everyone and brings Indian practice in line with global standards.
Second, service and modernisation become as important as new sales. A large part of India’s installed base is now crossing 20 years, and those lifts have to be properly maintained or replaced.
Third, demand will shift towards compact solutions. More buildings and homes need lifts in spaces where there is no machine room and very little pit depth. Machine-room-less and low-pit designs, custom-engineered to the available space, will become the normal requirement rather than the exception.
Q. Are developers and architects becoming more sophisticated in how they evaluate elevator partners?
Yes, and it is a welcome change. With so many new elevator companies entering the market, developers have become careful. They look at a company’s background, its completed work, and its actual competence—not just the quoted rate. What they want is reliability, speed, compliance, and a hassle-free job at a sensible cost.
They also want single-point accountability. Instead of separate vendors for construction hoists, passenger lifts, commercial lifts, car lifts, and home lifts, one company supplying everything makes coordination simpler and the overall cost better.
Architects now treat the lift as part of the building’s design, not just a service. And it is no longer only about MNC brands—leading clients are now giving technically strong Made in India brands work on prestige projects, as we did with the glass lift at Taj Palace Chambers.
Q. What are the biggest challenges currently facing India’s elevator industry?
The first is manpower and training. India installs tens of thousands of lifts every year, and each one needs service for decades. We are not training technicians at that pace. With taller towers coming up, high-rise work also demands a higher level of technical skill.
The second is uniform compliance. IS 17900 is now the mandatory safety code, but how consistently it is enforced across states and across companies remains the real question. There is also very little clarity on compact and home lift solutions—a fast-growing segment that now needs clear standards and regulation of its own.
The third is proprietary, password-locked controllers. Lifts are often sold at thin margins, and the building is then tied to that one brand for every repair and spare—along with pressure to modernise in seven to ten years, when a well-built lift should last far longer. The right to service must be promoted.
Q. How important will IoT, predictive maintenance, and remote monitoring become?
They will become important, but the value lies in how they are used. Remote monitoring genuinely helps when it catches a problem early—a door operator drawing abnormal current, or brake wear crossing a limit—before the lift breaks down. But data is only as good as the team acting on it. An alert in the morning means nothing if no technician reaches the site that day. Sensors do not fix lifts; trained people do.
So we deploy connected monitoring where it earns its place—hospitals, busy commercial buildings, high-traffic towers. For a small residential building, clean rails, correctly set safety gear, and a technician who turns up on time will always matter more than an app.
Q. What technologies will have the greatest impact on passenger experience over the next decade?
The biggest gains will come from engineering, not gadgets. Gearless machines are getting faster, smoother, and more compact. Overhead and pit requirements keep reducing, so a lift can now fit where one was never possible before. Safety features and rescue devices are becoming better, and destination control helps optimise waiting time in busy buildings.
The other big shift is design. The cabin is the only part of the lift a passenger actually sees, so glass cabins, better lighting, and well-designed interiors change how a whole building feels. That is where we have focused a lot of our own engineering.
Features like voice control and cabin screens are developing, and they have their place. But the passenger experience is still decided by ride quality, reliability, and safety—those fundamentals come first.
Q. Where do you see genuine opportunities for AI in vertical mobility?
The real opportunity is in predicting faults. Data on motor current, vibration, and door cycles can flag a failing part long before a routine check would. Traffic prediction is the second—learning a building’s daily pattern and positioning cars in advance. Camera-based safety is the third, such as detecting an obstruction in the door zone.
Where I would be careful is in labelling basic automation as AI. Every improvement should be judged on one test: does it improve safety, uptime, or energy use? If it does not, the customer should not be paying for it.
AI works where there is enough traffic and data to learn from—hospitals, transit hubs, large offices. In a small residential building, the same money is better spent on good components and dependable service.
Q. What does safety mean to ICARE beyond meeting statutory standards?
Statutory compliance is the starting point, not the finish line. For us, safety is about the decisions nobody sees. Most lift accidents in India are not caused by complicated technical failures—they come from cheap components and maintenance that was skipped. That is why we do not compromise on the parts that protect a passenger, whatever the price pressure on a job.
The clearest proof of that thinking is our temporary lifts: a construction hoist carries workers up a live site every day, so we build and maintain ours with the same safety features and the same seriousness as a permanent passenger lift.
Inside the company we have written this down as three non-negotiables— Safety, Honesty, and Quality—and we review ourselves against them every month. Safety has to be a daily habit, not a certificate on the wall.
Q. What are the most overlooked aspects of elevator maintenance and lifecycle management?
Installation quality. Today everyone has access to the same imported components, so parts are rarely the differentiator. What decides how a lift performs is how well it was installed—proper alignment of the rails, doors, and machine. Good alignment means less wear, fewer breakdowns, and a longer life, and that only comes from checking quality at every stage, not at the end.
This is why we run a four-stage inspection through the installation rather than a single final check. It is also what has earned us more demanding work, including firemen’s evacuation lifts in buildings of forty floors and above. Much of a lift’s twenty-year performance is decided before it ever carries a passenger.
Q. Elevators are increasingly becoming an extension of architecture and interior design. How is ICARE responding?
Premium projects today expect clean aesthetics and a uniform look, designed as one piece rather than assembled from different suppliers on site. And “premium” itself has changed—a gold finish cabin is standard now, not luxury.
Our response has been to build a real custom design capability. Taller cabins and doors, tile, marble and imported designer finishes, and complete turnkey structures—clean aluminium and glass shaft systems designed and installed by us—so the shaft and cabin read as one design element in the building.
The other half is fitting it into the space available. We use compact traction and belt-drive systems that need less overhead and pit, which gives better ride quality and more design freedom. This combination is what has won us work like the glass lift at Taj Palace Chambers.
Q. How do you see customisation influencing the future of elevators?
Customisation is moving from a luxury add-on to a basic expectation. In premium residences and hotels, no client wants a standard lift anymore.
But there are two kinds of customisation, and only one is difficult. Cosmetic customisation—finishes, lighting, glass—everyone offers it. Real customisation is engineering a solution for a hard site: a lift where there is no machine room, very little pit, an odd shaft shape, or a heritage building where the structure cannot be touched. That is where most of the value sits.
For us this is the core of the business. We started out doing customised lifts for compact and challenging spaces, and that is still what we are known for. The future belongs to companies that can offer both—the design finish a client wants, and the engineering to actually build it in the space available.
Q. What does a genuinely sustainable elevator ecosystem look like?
The solutions are well established— gearless machines with VVVF drives, regenerative drives, LED lighting, and sleep modes. On high-rise and high-traffic buildings, regeneration gives a real return. On a low-use residential lift it adds cost without much saving; there the gain is in reducing standby consumption. So specify by actual usage, not by brochure.
The bigger point is lifespan. A well-installed lift that is properly maintained and later modernised is far greener than replacing the whole system every ten years.
Q. How should manufacturers contribute to India’s transition towards green buildings?
By being honest about where the savings actually come from. Lifts do not carry a separate green rating in IGBC or GRIHA—their consumption folds into the building’s overall energy performance. So our real contribution is to give the consultant accurate equipment data for the building model, and to recommend efficient equipment only where it genuinely pays back. Telling a developer that a feature will not earn its cost on their project builds far more trust than selling it.
The second contribution is designing for a long life. If a lift is built and installed well, the building modernises it at year twenty instead of scrapping it. That saves far more material and energy than any single feature on the specification sheet.
Q. What has been the biggest lesson you’ve learned from building ICARE?
This business runs on people and trust. Components are available to everyone; the difference is the team that installs and services them. That is why we track employee engagement regularly.
Repeat business is the only real scorecard. If a client does not return for their next project, something is wrong—so we track customer satisfaction scores every month and work on improving them.
Customers want a reliable product, reliable service, at a fair price. What they are really buying is certainty. And certainty is not a one-time achievement—you have to keep raising your standards.
Q. What is one assumption about the elevator industry that needs to change?
A developer once told me, quite bluntly, that all lift companies are bad. It stayed with me, because he was not entirely wrong.
The assumption is that dealing with a lift company will be a hassle— timelines slip, commitments are not kept, communication is poor. Almost every project runs late and every vendor has an explanation ready. We have made these mistakes too, and we are still working on getting better at them.
So the change I want is not in technology. It is in execution—better systems, honest commitments, and clear communication through the job. A company that simply delivers on time and does what it said it would do will stand out. That itself says something about where our standards are.
Q. If we revisit this conversation in 2030, what would you like ICARE Lifts to be known for?
As the preferred Made in India elevator partner—one company covering everything, from the temporary construction lift on day one to firemen evacuation lifts, car lifts, home elevators, and commercial lifts, including the customised and challenging jobs.
As the company in this industry that delivers projects on time. And not the biggest, but the most reliable—in quality, in service, in execution, and in overall value.
In 2030 I would want ninety-nine per cent of our customers saying they are fully satisfied with ICARE. Not a hundred—that one per cent keeps you honest and keeps you improving.
