Anchor Electricals, a wholly-owned subsidiary of electronics major Panasonic India, has expanded its portfolio in the LED lighting segment, could you please throw some light on your business segment?
Panasonic is Japan’s No. 1 LED lighting brand and the world’s third largest LED lighting company. Panasonic LED’s theme “Perfectly Brilliant” sums up its features in the simplest possible manner. The emphasis is on “Quality of Light.” With more than 30,000 products in its LED portfolio Panasonic has the widest basket of LED luminaires available in the globe. Anchor by Panasonic has introduced some of these products custom designed to suit the tastes of new India. While the company has its range of Value Plus luminaires that befit requirements of residential premises, it also sells premium luminaires Neu Archi and Professional luminaires under the Panasonic brand befitting the needs of Commercial, Hospitality, Industrial and some Outdoor lighting.
Are you planning to manufacture the products in India? If yes, when would that be?
We have already started manufacturing some of the products in India through OEM and ODM this year. We may look at manufacturing LED looking at the market demand in the near future.
What is the current capacity of your organization and could you brief us about your future expansions?
We have a total of 9 operating units across three key regions of Daman, Gujarat and Haridwar. Anchor is one of the largest manufacturer of wiring devices and our Haridwar plant itself manufactures mores than 300 million wiring devices per annum and 2 million switchgear poles per month.
Anchor has been manufacturing and marketing world-class eco-friendly products, request you to elaborate on your innovations in this segment?
As key member of Panasonic Eco Solutions Company in India, Anchor’s focus is on developing and marketing eco-aware products. It was the first company in India to stop its profitable GLS bulb manufacturing as early as 2007 and switch on to CFL. Today, the company has a basket of RoHS compliant products in its Wiring Devices as well as Switchgear vertical. It also unveiled India’s First ISI compliant, Five Star Energy rated, Low Watt loss Ceiling fan. We were the first company to introduce global standard LED products in the country even before the IS came up with its own. While we do not manufacture LED in our facilities directly, we do manufacture RoHS compliant switches and switchgear inhouse adapting technology from Panasonic Japan. Even Panasonic HIT complies with the said compliance.
Anchor is a part of the second largest conglomerate in the electrical industry with Panasonic Corporation, how has the journey been so far and could you narrate your future plans?
As a Panasonic Corporation company, Anchor intends to emerge as a leading Energy Generation, Conservation and Management solutions provider in the near future and will play a key role in contributing to the infrastructural development in India in areas such as affordable housing, Smart Cities etc. It aims at a holistic growth in all of its business verticals and is focussed on completing its product basket at present, to make a safer product available at every price-point in the vast Indian Socio-Economic Spectrum.
Amidst the developments such as Demonetization, what is your current growth strategy for the future i.e. 2017?
While demonetization did create a temporary setback for the industry, it is a fantastic initiative of the government as this will affect the unorganized sector on a long term. This will lead to more organized players increasing the transparency in businesses as well as the bureaucracy. Initiatives such as Make in India will deliver the necessary boost making ease of doing business a reality. The upcoming GST will positively impact the economy as well on a long-term. We will focus on expanding our existing business further with some new product additions in the residential space as well as eye expanding our export markets. In the near future we foresee manufacturing of not just Indian standard products but global standard products in the country.