When it comes to power quality, Eaton is already an established company, what kind of a growth road-map do you have for the Indian market?
We have been growing our business very significantly and we are trying to leverage and give the best of our products to the customers. If you see the data center segments – they need the best of every product and gone are the days where we talk about efficiency levels. In terms of technology, we focus on not only giving a foreign service but also on having a predictable nature of products. Customers are worried about how we will get an advanced integration of a probable system and to that extent, the value proposition what Eaton talks about is not the simple single element of the price point, we talk about the total cost of ownership when we buy a product what is the intended purpose of the product? What value does it add in the entire life-cycle of the product? So that way our focus has been to give the most efficient product and we have an idea on the sustainability and durability of the product. That philosophy has helped us grow to whatever level we are and we are localizing a lot of products also. When I say localisation, it is not to drive the cost down to save, but to localize to develop our own technical talent within the system. This means that we are able to go closer to the customer, understand the requirements and we are able to understand the product. So, the localisation along with the technical capabilities to be able to understand the customer needs.
What is the percentage of localisation?
Eaton is deeply committed to India. We are consistently investing in expanding our manufacturing, engineering and services footprint in the country. Thus, leveraging the diverse opportunities that the country offers. As of now, in power quality products, for single-phase UPS we are 100 per cent localized and in the three-phase, we are more than 60 per cent localized and the 30 to 40 per cent is electronic and for that also the volume is growing before the end of this year.
When you talk about predictive maintenance or even real time monitoring it involves a lot of data…
Today, intelligent power leverages the digital revolution and drives innovation through a combination of smart assets, connectivity, data science, and business models that are creating new interactions. At the heart of intelligent power are “things” that produce, collect, and process data. This data can help generate insights to make better decisions as more technologies have built-in connectivity for the Internet of Things (IoT).
We have a lot of data coming into our system. That is where, whatever the new products we are introducing we are ensuring that they are compatible with the current day requirements and today everyone talks about IoT and we see that those data points can be accommodated. We have those capabilities in place.
How are you driving growth within India?
Eaton is continuously growing its footprint in India. Presently, all businesses and functional shared services are well represented with over 5,500 employees, 450-plus channel partners, 8 manufacturing sites and presence in 19 key locations. In the electrical sector, we are into power quality. We started our journey with power quality and have grown well in this aspect. Today we have the capability to manufacture to one megawatt, coming to the power distribution side, our products are not ‘Made in India’, so when you are locally playing and try to import the product, we have been very carefully been choosing our adjacency in terms of localizing the products. Before completing
our basket in the low voltage sphere, we are moving into the medium voltage and this ELECRAMA we have launched the RMUs starting from 11 kV to 36 kV. In India, no other company has 36 kV and that gives us the edge and today the system in India is getting fulling upgraded to 36 kV.
When you have this market there, I see a very good opportunity. We see that the growth in the EV segment is going to be significant.
Speaking about the medium voltage segment, what is the volume you are looking at and how competitive is the market?
Gone are the days when we had the problem with the basic generation, and today on paper we are power surplus as far as generation is concerned. But with distribution, the problem is also with regard to arresting the leakages. This is possible only when we upgrade the overall distribution network. Even with smart cities, the quality of distribution is a growing market, but we do have various players. In 36 kV and 11 kV segments, there are no regulations, but going forward especially with greenhouse gas reduction, we think about it now and that is where we see the differentiation in terms of quality and sustainability.
We have a set of differentiation – we presently have the SF6 version and we also have the other vacuum version which is completely SF6 free. Talking about today, we have a good market share, so overall in the low voltage and in the distribution side, I don’t say that we have a significant market share. But talking about the power quality (UPS), we are presently the number 4. Though we have share, the power quality business has not been growing in the way the actual projection is given. There are times when we get the projection but on the singe phase side there are so many players have come and it becomes really difficult. When it comes to the 500 kW, certainly we are going to grow as we know that the data centers are booming and our products are extensively used in the healthcare sector also. Reliability wise and in the manufacturing sector, every plant and every industry must upgrade to their manufacturing capabilities. So that way we must know how to upgrade and keep pace with our development and I am sure that we should be able to leverage the growth. We have a double-digit growth year -on-year which means we are growing our market share and all the initiatives that we take up have met its objectives.
