A shared incident board for chemical estates and the district crisis group
TL;DR Plumeboard gives every hazardous plant in an industrial estate, the factory inspectorate and the district crisis group the same live screen during a leak or fire. It also runs the drills the law already asks for and texts nearby villages in their own language. Plant owners pay, through their estate association.
India has about 1,861 Major Accident Hazard (MAH) units spread over 298 districts, and one count puts significant chemical accidents in a decade at 130, with 259 deaths[1]. When the styrene tank at a polymer plant in Visakhapatnam leaked around 3 a.m. on 7 May 2020, 13 people died and more than 1,000 were exposed in the villages around it[2].
The legal plans exist. Each MAH occupier writes an on-site plan, and the factory inspectorate and district authority write an off-site plan[3]. In practice those plans are binders on a shelf, and neighbouring plants, the fire service and the villages a kilometre away rarely see the same facts at the same time.
What it does, in regulatory terms: coordination and record-keeping software that supports the on-site and off-site plans required under the MSIHC Rules 1989 and CAEPPR Rules 1996. It does not replace those plans or the authorities who own them, and it makes no plume-prediction claim it cannot back with site sensors.
Each plant loads its chemicals, storage points, assembly areas and contacts once. During an incident, the control room declares it on Plumeboard. Neighbouring plants, the fire station and the crisis-group officers then see the same map, a time-stamped log and a checklist taken from the plan itself. Approved messages go out by SMS and voice call to registered residents in the affected radius.
Between incidents, it schedules and logs the mock drills the rules ask for and keeps contact lists current.
The seed wanted a predictive layer over all city emergency services. India already routes public emergencies through the state-run 112 system, so a startup can't own that. Chemical estates are a narrower problem, and they come with a legal mandate and a buyer.
The buyer is the MAH occupier, usually the plant's safety head, buying through the estate's industrial association so neighbours join together. There's no public price for this kind of tool in India. My assumption is ₹2–5 lakh per plant per year, with the district crisis group and fire service given free access, since their presence is what makes the board worth paying for.
The drill rules are explicit - on-site mock drills every six months, and an off-site rehearsal led by the District Collector at least once a calendar year[4]. The Visakhapatnam leak in 2020 put night-time coordination under scrutiny, and the DPDP Act 2023 now sets clear duties for the resident contact lists this needs.
Nobody publishes a figure for spending on industrial emergency coordination software in India. The bottom-up base is about 1,861 MAH units[1]. At the assumed ₹2–5 lakh a year, that's roughly ₹37–93 Cr of annual revenue if every unit paid, which no vendor will ever reach. Treat it as a ceiling and not a forecast.
One gas-detection maker's plume software models how a release spreads from site gas sensors and weather stations[5], but it's built for one site's responders. The CAMEO suite hosted by the US agency NOAA is a long-standing planning tool for chemical emergencies[6]. Large Indian plants run their own control rooms and siren systems. I found no Indian product that puts several plants, the district and the villages on one board.
| Difficulty | Moderate (44/100) |
| Starting capital | ₹60 L–1.2 Cr |
| Time to launch | 6–9 months |
The software is ordinary. The hard part is getting competing plants to share chemical inventories and getting a district crisis group to use a private tool during a real incident. Expect the first estate to take most of a year.
The software itself needs no licence, but it has to fit the chemical accident rules your buyers follow.
Building this outside India? The categories above usually have a local equivalent, so check with your own regulator.
Don't trust AI to predict where a plume goes without site sensors, and never let it send a public message on its own.
Want to work out the AI layer for Plumeboard? Talk to Yash →
This suits a founder from process safety or a factory inspectorate who knows how estate associations work. If you're hoping to sell AI predictions then skip it. Prove first that one estate of 10 or more MAH plants will pay together and run two drills on the board.
My estimate is ₹60 L–1.2 Cr, mostly for the software, messaging costs and long sales to estate associations. The kit has the details.
No licence for the software, but it must support the plans required under the MSIHC Rules 1989 and CAEPPR Rules 1996.
Yes, most countries have major-hazard rules and local crisis planning. Tools like CAMEO already exist in the US, so check what's free locally first.
The free Plumeboard validation kit has the line-by-line capital breakdown, the effort scoring, the chemical-accident rules checklist, a 14-day validation sprint with pass/fail targets, a 90-day launch plan, 10 interview questions for plant safety heads and district officers, and 5 assumptions to test. Download the kit →
Thinking about building Plumeboard or something close to it? The make-or-break work is getting rival plants and the district crisis group onto one board before the first real incident, and that's a conversation I'd enjoy having. If you need a hand, you know where to find me. Talk to Yash →
For illustration only. Names are fictional and ideas hypothetical; sourced facts are real but may be out of date. Nothing here is legal, financial or professional advice, and Yash Khatri is not personally liable for any use of it. Read the full disclaimer.