Asokdas shares insights on revolutionizing air management, driving green building practices.
We caught up with Asokdas Damodaran, Managing Director of Systemair India and President of AMCA International, to dive into the world of HVAC innovation and sustainability. With a career spanning decades, Asokdas shares insights on revolutionizing air management, driving green building practices, and shaping the future of climate-smart solutions. Let’s hear from this industry leader!
EMIRATES PROJECTS: What are the key challenges and opportunities for the air movement and control industry in the Asia-Pacific and Middle East region?
ASOKDAS DAMODARAN: The Asia-Pacific region is a powerhouse in global HVAC manufacturing, while the Middle East stands out as one of the most demanding environments for performance, reliability, and climate resilience. Together, these markets are driving demand in the air movement and control industry.
In these markets, the biggest challenge is also the greatest opportunity: the lack of harmonized standards and certification frameworks. Across both regions, building codes and testing requirements remain fragmented, creating uncertainty for manufacturers and barriers to trade. Yet, this same gap opens the door for collective action and knowledge-sharing. By working together through industry associations such as AMCA and initiatives led by organizations like Systemair, we can help establish common performance benchmarks that reflect regional climates while aligning with international best practices and the state-of-the-art in technological developments.
Standardization is more than a compliance exercise. It’s a foundation for energy performance, innovation and trust. When testing, certification, and efficiency standards align across markets, manufacturers can focus on product improvement rather than navigating inconsistent rules. In turn, end-users benefit from greater transparency, quality assurance, and confidence that systems perform safely, efficiently, and sustainably.
EMIRATES PROJECTS: How can regional cooperation drive innovation in air movement and control technologies?
ASOKDAS DAMODARAN: Regional cooperation allows us to turn diverse challenges into shared opportunities. By exchanging technical knowledge, key markets such as India and Malaysia in the Asia-Pacific and Saudi Arabia in the GCC region can adapt and refine solutions more efficiently. Technologies proven in India’s humid conditions and high temperatures can inspire design improvements in Middle Eastern climates, for example, and vice versa, ensuring that innovation is informed by real-world performance across environments.
Beyond technology transfer, true progress lies in aligning standards, certifications, and testing protocols. When regions collaborate to harmonise regulatory frameworks, it accelerates product validation, improves market access, and builds trust among manufacturers, consultants, and end-users alike. Such cooperation reduces duplication of testing, encourages consistency in quality and performance benchmarks, and drives continuous improvement.
In this way, regional collaboration becomes a powerful catalyst for advancing performance, efficiency, and sustainability, ensuring that the global air movement industry evolves in a way that is both regionally relevant and globally aligned.
EMIRATES PROJECTS: How do you see Systemair’s role in supporting AMCA’s mission of performance and sustainability across various sectors?
ASOKDAS DAMODARAN: Systemair is a global company with Swedish roots, and Sweden has long championed energy efficiency, indoor air quality, and sustainability. As a company, we share AMCA’s core values of trust, transparency, and technical integrity. In 1996, Systemair’s Skinnskatteberg laboratory in Sweden became one of Europe’s first AMCA-accredited facility for airflow and sound testing. Since then, Systemair has expanded its accredited laboratories to Germany, India, and the United States, reinforcing our commitment to engineering excellence and global quality standards. Through my own experience, I’ve had the privilege of overseeing the establishment of our accredited laboratories in India, helping to extend that culture of precision and compliance to a rapidly growing market.
Ultimately, sustainability is a megatrend. It’s not reversible, and it’s here to stay. From both a manufacturer’s and an association’s perspective, we must address it by developing more energy efficient products and ensuring they are tested and certified to perform as intended. Today, sustainability in product design goes beyond energy efficiency. It can also include CO₂ footprints, logistics impact, and material efficiency. This evolving landscape positions Systemair and AMCA to play a leading role in shaping strategies that unite performance, compliance, and sustainability in meaningful, measurable ways while enabling customers to more easily identify the best-performing solutions.
Digitalisation is another irreversible transformation. With the rise of AI, we have the tools to enhance product design, streamline processes, and strengthen certification enforcement. For AMCA, digitalisation creates new opportunities to improve transparency, automate monitoring, and build capacity within the industry, ensuring that the principles of performance and sustainability continue to evolve with technology.
EMIRATES PROJECTS: What does your appointment as AMCA President signify for India, the wider Asia-Pacific region, and the Middle East?
ASOKDAS DAMODARAN: My presidency at AMCA marks a historic milestone, as I am the first to hold this position from South Asia. This underscores the growing recognition of the Asia-Pacific region’s influence and, I hope, inspires more members to actively engage in AMCA’s global mission. This is why my term will focus on, “Global Vision. Sustainable Action.” My priorities include strengthening AMCA standards and the Certified Ratings Program (CRP) beyond compliance, developing new performance differentiators, and fostering strategic partnerships to address global industry challenges collaboratively.
This mission not only supports the growth of standards across the Asia-Pacific but also in the Middle East, where both regions share deep historical ties driven by supply-chain dynamics, technology exchange, and overlapping market needs. However, there is still significant work ahead. In the Middle East, the focus must be on evolving and harmonizing building codes to ease the compliance burden for manufacturers. At present, regulations differ between the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and other GCC countries, and even more so when compared with Southeast Asia or India, where regulatory frameworks are still largely in its infancy, with the only real lighthouse being Singapore. Many countries in the region still follow individual approaches, though overall progress toward harmonization and regulatory readiness is encouraging. The goal is to engage more deeply in policy discussions and ensure the right standards are embedded in national codes.
Ultimately, the main objective is to empower regions to act locally while contributing globally. It’s about creating a truly global organization, one that recognizes regional strengths, fosters collaboration, and drives sustainable action worldwide.