Japanese industrial solutions giant Hitachi, on Thursday, announced that it would invest Rs. 4,700 crore in India as part of its expansion plans, which include setting up five new manufacturing plants by March 2016.
Hitachi is also looking at increasing its human resource strength in the country and double it to 13,000 over the next four years.
It was for the first time that the company held its board meeting outside Japan. “Today Hitachi had its first board meeting outside Japan, and we held it in India. We also fixed an India strategy till 2015-16. We target to treble our revenue from India to 300 billion yen (about Rs. 20,000 crore). India's contribution will rise to three per cent by then from one per cent now,” Hitachi president Hiroaki Nakanishi told journalists here. The company had consolidated revenue of about 100 billion yen (Rs. 6,700 crore) during 2011-12, he added. Mr. Nakanishi said in order to meet the target they would invest 70 billion yen (about Rs. 4,700 crore) by 2015-16. Part of this investment would go for expansion of businesses by acquiring local entities. New type of business development is our target, he added.
On the acquisition front, he said the company would look for companies in the social infrastructure segment. When asked what made Hitachi so bullish about the Indian investment scenario, he said that the economic slowdown was a global issue, not an Indian one. “We have to manage business between this. We do not change the priority or investment decisions in the current scenario of the Indian economy,” he added.
He said the company had to adjust output of automotive components due to slowdown of vehicle sales in India.
Hitachi India Managing Director Ichiro Iino said that at present, the company has 12 plants in operation. “We would have five new facilities coming up by March 2016 across all our business verticals.
The five new plants would include two for auto components in Chennai and Neemrana in Rajasthan and also plants by joint ventures,” he said.
