Rittal sensing growth opportunities despite of having unorganised sector

December 15, 2014 12:55 pm

“Almost 70 per cent of the market is made up of the unorganised sector. Though the sector is unorganised, there are very few branded players in this market, that’s where we see the opportunity.”
Jacob Chandy, VP – Sales and Marketing, Rittal India Pvt. Ltd.
 Rittal India Pvt. Ltd., with its continuous efforts and improvements, has been establishing itself in the field of industrial enclosures business to become one of the promising players in the industry. In an interaction with OEM Update, Jacob Chandy discussed about what is driving the market and about challenges to market growth.
How do you look at your position in the automation market?We command a very good position, especially in the automation market. Today, when it comes to automation enclosures and controls system enclosures, Rittal is being preferred by customers over the years.
What are the products and technology you offer in the automation segment?In the automation segment our major product is enclosures, whether it is the large enclosure or small enclosures. Today, any automation product needs to fit into its environment unless it’s a field instrument. All these products get into enclosures and so we are there, we cater to the entire process and also include for the electrical system, and the junction boxes.
As far as technology is concerned, our differentiator would be that everybody fabricates in metal. We manufacture enclosures; we don’t fabricate the way basic fabrication is done. Our USP is the VIP production, which is required today in the painting process. We paint our enclosures the way a car is painted, except for the last stage, which is the product coating stage, the pattern is completely the same as the car. We have enclosures for indoor applications as well as for outdoor applications.
How do you see the driving factors for the market and opportunities?Well, I will say enclosures are required for every application, whether you have a street light and you need a junction box below it, it’s an enclosure. Whether you find a toll booth, you will get an enclosure there. Today when the market is growing, there is a lot of infrastructure, a lot of power plants, a number of roads and highways; this is where we see tremendous opportunity for enclosures. We also expect the market to change. The more projects planned, the more enclosures required
Almost 70 per cent of the market is made up of the unorganised sector. There are very few branded players in this market, that’s where we see the opportunity. The unorganised sector presents tremendous opportunity for us.
What are the present challenges? The first challenge is the competition from the unorganised sector where the price levels are very low. This is possible because they do not follow any quality standards. The second challenge is that enclosures are still not considered as important elements in any projects. So that is the challenge we face of how to educate the customers of the importance good enclosure.
How do you see the potential of your automation business in India?We are not into automation as such; however, we provide enclosures to automation vendors like ABB, Honeywell and Siemens. We supply enclosures to automation market.
What are your future plans to gain maximum market share from this potential market?The plan is to shift the market to another sector. Currently, the unorganised sector has got its own challenges in term of power requirements, and labour requirements. Going forward, we see a lot of local discontinuing their business and they are not able to match our volumes as well.
We have our own warehouses: one in the East, one in the North,two in the West and one in the South. With Rittal warehouses stalking the standard products, we should be able to respond quickly to customer requirements. This is the biggest plan we have in addition to taking the market away from the unorganised sector.