Larsen &Toubro's Electrical and Automation (E&A) division is benchmarking its innovations in products to revenues.

For 2011, new products account for 41 per cent of the division's total revenue of about Rs 3,674 crore, said Mr Sharat C Bhargava, Senior Vice-President, Electrical and Automation.

Mr Bhargava said NPI (new product Intensity) is the percentage revenue of new products in the last five years over the current sales for the division. Hence, the percentage for 2011 was much higher than pervious years as in 2010 it was 33 per cent, 30 per cent in 2009 and 29 per cent in 2008.

On innovation, he said L&T has filed for 151 patents in the last fiscal. In 2010 and 2009, it was 128 and 108.

Stating that it would require at least one-and-a-half years to two years for any patent to translate into revenue, he said L&T has over 600 live patents and the current 41 per cent is of products that would have patented in the last five years.

Business portfolio

E&A's business portfolio covers a wide range of electrical equipment such as medium and low voltage switchgear, control-gear, building electrical, energy metres and medical equipment. The centre has introduced a range of new products and variants of existing ones in control-gear, power-gear, industrial automation and building automation.

E&A's switchgear design and development centre leads the new product development strategy and product life-cycle management. Over 200 dedicated engineers are engaged in developing innovative solutions.

Mr Bhargava said the market size of the switchgear products is between Rs 10,000 crore and Rs 12,000 crore and 75 per cent of this was in the medium voltage segment of below 36 Kv and about 15-20 per cent in the high voltage segment.

On L&T's share, he said it was about 30 per cent in the low voltage segment (below 1,000 volts) and 4-5 per cent in the medium voltage segment (up to 36 Kv).

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