Bal Dixit is the chairman of Newtex Industries. He founded Newtex in 1978 after being one of the first researchers to formulate a viable alternative to asbestos in fire safety gear. In 1977, he started work on developing a product he would later call Zetex in response to the impending asbestos ban. This product exhibits many of the properties of asbestos, without the side effects of lung cancer or mesothelioma.