Global energy, healthcare, technological and industrial products giant Siemens AG announced that it planned to pump in around 250 million euro (about Rs.1,700 crore) worth of investments in India to develop nearly 60 new baseline products, especially for the Indian urban and rural markets in various sectors, as part of its new global strategy.
Asserting that India and China were the major pillars of growth for manufacturing as well as sales during the coming decade, Siemens spokesman Bernd Etitel told visiting Indian journalists that the global strategy of the company was based out of major focus on India.
“We are looking at a bigger share of workforce and also jump in revenue from Indian markets in the coming years. We plan to launch 60 new baseline products to cater to Indian people's needs in various sectors till 2020,” he said.
Stating that the Indian market was price-sensitive and a recent survey had indicated that 70 per cent market did not match with Siemens products, it was decided to launch a new range of products for India.
“The new products will have a higher component of R&D and manufacturing at the local level. We are bullish on India and we have outlined an investment of 250 million euro for this purpose to develop products in energy, renewables, healthcare and, of course, venture in a big way into the infrastructure sector,” Mr. Etitel said.
Mr. Etitel said the company was targeting $1 billion sales during the next few years through the sale of such baseline products. He also said that at present nearly 17,000 personnel were working for Siemens in India and the company was sitting on an order book of 2.4 billion euro (about Rs.16,400 crore) by the end of 2010.
Circuit breaker
Mr. Etitel also announced that Siemens had also launched the world's first 1,200 kV SF6 circuit breaker from its manufacturing facility at Aurangabad in Maharashtra.
With this launch, Siemens once again reinforced its commitment to partner India in its energy mission. The 1200 kV system will take India into a new transmission age.
