'Panasonics Shift Help India'

In an interaction with Mint, Manish Sharma, chairman of India and South Asia, said the shift was strategic as India was moving towards being competitive in the global value chains which would need massive investments in manufacturing by not just individual companies but also by the ecosystem of suppliers.

“We want to not only be a manufacturer ourselves, but we want to also support manufacturing in the country," Sharma said. “So far our identity for the last many decades has been that we are a product company, but we want to provide solutions."

He added that the company had created a specialised team called smart factory solutions to manage business development and educate companies to have more automation in their manufacturing processes. Sharma said the company had developed a solution called Miraie Profactory platform which enables smart factory automation by connecting machines to the 5G platform via sensors, which will be useful for manufacturing majors setting up their 5G networks for automation.

“This will be able to handle big data and help manufacturers take real time decisions," he said. The solution would eliminate bottlenecks in manufacturing process using AI, and will use the decisions to improve productivity, he said.

Panasonic is in talks with global companies that are planning to set up large scale factories in India for SMT or surface mount technology, as well as automated guided vehicles for applications like pick and place for loading and unloading components on SMT machines, he said. The solutions would be critical when semiconductor fabrication picks pace in the country.

The B-to-B segments including energy solutions, industrial devices and the new verticals of smart solutions will contribute 40-45% of the total revenues.

To be sure, Sharma said that the consumer segment will continue to get 27-28% of revenues from the consumer appliances segment, primarily AC and refrigerator sales which are expected to be higher than last year’s owing to early onset of summer. “Last year for our cooling products like ACs and Refrigerators, we registered around 35% growth (for Apr’22- till date as compared to the same period in 2021) this year we are hoping for a continued growth momentum registering double-digit growth. Similarly, we have expanded our portfolio of refrigerators and introduced Prime convertible refrigerators which are a customized series designed specifically for the Indian market," he said.