R&M (Reichle & De-Massari AG), has set up a manufacturing facility in Bengaluru, as the Swiss cabling solutions provider aims to tap a surge in demand from communication networks and data centres in the country.
The company plans to set up another greenfield facility in India within two years to make advanced cabling components, Gaurav Ahluwalia, MD R&M India, said in a telephone interview.
“We started four years back by acquiring a small fiber company called Advanced Fibre Systems (AFS) that was about less than 30 people with less than eight-crore rupee turnover.
“As of now, we have 300 employees. We have already crossed the 100 crore turnover now. We are the major suppliers to all the telcos in India, including Bharti and Jio. This [manufacturing facility] is the first investment done in Asia Pacific,” he said. The AFS acquisition was the first one in 50 years of the company’s history.
“With this success, we went ahead and did acquisitions in the U.S. and Czech Republic and Brazil. With this model, they might be looking at other Asia Pacific regions also.”
The company’s solutions are used by network operators, in office buildings, data centres, apartments, as well as in the industry. R&M operates in Europe, the Middle East and in Asia.
R&M achieved sales of Swiss Francs 232.1 million in 2017, with 80% of that figure being generated overseas. The company is wholly owned by Martin and Peter Reichle. “In India, we are already developing the design and doing the engineering for molds for some customers in Europe. Now we want to make India the global hub for designing of the mold and engineering of the products. They are looking to expand this from India to Europe and India to the U.S. also,” Mr. Ahluwalia said.
He said the demand for the company’s products was primarily driven by data centres.
Rapid growth
The APAC market is growing rapidly with a 25% market share at $42 billion and the Middle East and Africa region hold a 3% share with nearly $6 billion in investments, according to Cushman & Wakefield, a 100-year-old real estate brokerage giant backed by private equity firm TPG.
Digital data in India was about 40,000 petabytes in 2010 and this number is projected to go up to 2.3 million petabytes by 2020, twice as fast as the worldwide rate
India had a data centre capacity of 1.3 million square feet in 2007, which is expected to go up to 10.9 million square feet by the end of 2018 at a compounded annual growth rate of 19.8% (excluding the data centres smaller than 1,000 square feet). Mr. Ahluwalia said R&M will employ 600 people within two years.
“With the new regulation coming into India that data centres have to be located in India, there is going to be a good demand for those in India. The second is the Giga fiber application from Jio. This is going to drive the demand for the next five years.” R&M is also investing in warehouses with a current capacity of 12,000 square feet. “We carry over ₹30 crore of fiber component to meet the demand.”
“All the fiber adapters, connectors we are still getting from our plant in Europe and we are assembling those here in India. We look forward to making most parts in India,” he said.
For the Smart City projects in cities such as Nagpur, Vizag, Hyderabad, Pune, Raipur and Mumbai, R&M has already executed cabling projects. “Few more are in the pipeline.”
