Luminous upbeat on growth prospects in solar sector

Luminous Power Technologies, a home electrical, power back up, batteries and solar applications company, is upbeat on business prospects, particularly in the solar energy sector.

The company, now part of the diversified French major Schneider, with seven manufacturing units, has expanded its India presence while also seeking to boost its export volumes.

Vipul Sabharwal, Managing Director, Luminous, said the company closed the last financial year with a turnover of over ₹3,000 crore and the near term target is to breach overall revenues of ₹5,000 crore, backed by growth in the domestic business as also export volumes.

Sabharwal told BusinessLine that, “We have been growing at more than the industry average and are looking at achieving a strong double-digit growth across various business — domestic electrical appliances, power back up and UPS, battery solutions and lately rooftop solar solutions, where we have adopted an integrated solutions approach.”

“About a year ago, Luminous had become a 100-per-cent-owned company of Schneider, after completing the buyout of the residual promoter stake in the company. Since then, the strategy has been fine tuned to address newer areas including the sunrise sector of solar rooftop solutions with an integrated solutions approach, including facilitating finance.”

“Such an approach takes away the pain points of consumers as they just have to seek a solution without having to bother to go around from one place to another,” Sabharwal explained.

Referring to the government moves to push the solar power sector growth, he said: “This is a huge unfolding market with immense potential. Significantly, the implementation is not just in urban parts but in the rural areas across the country as homes, commercial establishments, educational institutions and hospitals and so on, are keen to have robust and reliable back-up solutions,” he said.

The company export business from Africa, West Asia and countries in the Indian sub-continent and the region contributes about 8-10 per cent and solar segment about 10 per cent. The rest is covered by inverters, batteries, backup solutions and appliances. “We expect the latter to go up to about 30-35 per cent,” he explained.

For the growth of the rooftop solar segment, a number of factors have turned favourable. The prices are lower than before, there is a growing population that wants to be environment friendly by taking to renewable energy, another segment which has begun to enjoy the fruits of development and do not want any hindrance to their comfort with disruption of power supply, he said.

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