The Hindu Business Line : Philips plans setting up new development centre in India

Chennai, Aug. 14 Philips Electronics India Ltd plans to set up a development centre in India to develop specific lighting solutions for the Indian market. The facility will come up adjacent to its technology support centre in Noida.

This development facility will be Philips’ third such centre in the world. It has similar centres in Eindhoven in The Netherlands and Shanghai in China.

Interacting with the media here on Thursday, Mr Murali Sivaraman, Managing Director and CEO, Indian Sub-Continent, said that the centre would initially commence with 10-15 engineers but would eventually grow into a 30 to 40-member outfit in two to three years.

India is a fast growing market and Philips realised the need to develop lighting electronics in India for the local market. Besides, India is a major source of engineers, explained Mr Sivaraman.

Philips is the market leader in the compact fluorescent lamps (CFL) business with a share of 30 per cent. Its two factories in Mohali and Vadodara churn out 40 million CFLs a year.

Capacities in both these plants were being increased. India uses around 120 million CFLs a year and the market is growing at 15 per cent.

Mr Sivaraman said that Philips as an organisation was focusing more on the BRIC countries, which were considered emerging markets. He said that local managements were now empowered to develop the market that was relevant to the country.

The new global development centre could also become a global research hub and would also work on new lighting technologies such as LEDs (light emitting diodes).

Mr Sivaraman said Philips had taken over globally the mother and child care brand Avent and would shortly launch co-branded feeding bottles, nipples and other child care products in the Indian market.

Repositioning

The company had repositioned itself as a diversified health and well-being company. The focus would be on lighting solutions, consumer lifestyle and healthcare. The launch of its water purifier and mixer were all suitably Indianised for the local market.

Close to 40-45 per cent of the company’s sales of around Rs 2,890 crore in 2007 came from the lighting solutions business.

While 35 per cent was from the lifestyle business the rest was from healthcare. In lighting solutions, the ratio of consumer and professional sales was 60:40, he added.

Philips, Mr Sivaraman said, was also looking at the “value range” for health care products – diagnostic equipment that have lower prices than that of the competition with similar features.

To increase sales in this segment, the company was open to the idea of manufacturing either in India or China, or even acquiring companies.

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