New Delhi, Apr 27 (IANS): The coronavirus crisis has seen several sectors halt operations but few industries have served as the lifeline during the standstill period and security and facility management services have turned out to be one among them.

Rituraj Kishore Sinha, who heads the security and facility management services major Security and Intelligence Services (India) Ltd (SIS), is of the view that the recent crisis has established these outsourced services as essential.

Speaking to IANS, the Group Managing Director of SIS said that demand of these services have, in fact, increased, like healthcare and pharmaceuticals, but noted that the reason behind the surge in demand is "very unfortunate".

"A lot of the time in the past, people have not seen them as extremely critical, or not many people even know that security is a Rs 1 lakh crore per annum industry in India. One thing that got established in this period is the resilient nature of demand and the fact that these are essential services in society in general... right from the fact that government has declared us as essential services," he said.

"When this whole situation broke out, essential services meant that we became the first line of defence. Suddenly, the guard outside your building started with fever check. You would have never seen them before do this. All the heads of large companies, their HR head, admin head they wanted to know how their workplace would be kept more secure and hygienic."

Sinha said that out of the 2.3 lakh workforce of the company, around 98 per cent of the people are on the field during the current pandemic.

He noted that the cash logistics segment also witnessed a surge in demand during the period.

Talking of the company's preparations regarding personal protective equipment for workers, he said that SIS has been prepared since its Singapore operations first got impacted in January and had to be supplied with masks from India.

"We started supplying masks and things like that from India into Singapore in the month of January so these types of things is actually because of our international operations sort of alerted us well in advance," Sinha told IANS.

Sinha further said that his company was among the first in the country to have trained its security personnel for fever checking, along with keeping themselves protected.

"SIS has given relief to employees who have medical issues like diabetes, heart or lung disease and they have been asked to work from home," he said.

On the company's revenue prospects, the SIS Group MD said that the coronavirus crisis is unlikely to impact its revenue for the January-March quarter. The company is scheduled to announce the Q4 earning on April 30.