Interview with Mr. VP Mahendru, Chairman, EON Electric
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Give us an overview of LED lighting Industry growth in India and growing application?
LED Lights unlike incandescent lights or fluorescent lights are electronically controlled and triggered for operations including switching “ON”, “OFF” or dimming etc. as required.
LED lights which were initially used to replace incandescent bulbs are fast replacing all kinds of sources of light including fluorescent tubes, flood lights, signal lights, railway carriage lights and head lights or lights as otherwise used in road transport vehicles. In fact the low consumption of power by these LED lights make them a natural preferred choice particularly when power needs to be drawn from the batteries whenever power supply gets disrupted. In fact, the energy efficiency of LED Lights particularly at peak hours of load in the evening helps in substantially reducing these loads and thus curtail over load trippings of power in the evening. In fact this has also helped reduced cost and dis-comfort which was involved in using batteries as part of the emergency lighting service.
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What challenges is the LED Lighting industry facing in India?
LED Lighting in India has indeed expanded and grown by over 50% annually over the last few years. India has the unique strength of excellent world-class R&D technologists in electronics which is the base for LED lighting industry. This is helping the Indian Lighting Industry to continuously incorporate new innovative improvements in performance of the LED Lights manufactured in India. However, the most critical hurdle in the growth of LED manufacturing in India is on account of inadequate development in manufacturing of LED chips and micro chips, as they still have to be imported at high cost resulting in constraints in developing larger variety, colors and performance and innovations in LED Lights.
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Your innovation towards affordable LED lighting products?
EON has developed a variety of LED Lights including LED Bulbs and LED Tubes which incorporate sensors with dimming feature which can be used as required. This puts it ON in the evening after sun set and puts it OFF at sun rise, as per users requirement thus adding the unique feature of additional energy saving through these LED lights.
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What are new technologies and products emerging in this segment?
The dual sensors which can now be incorporated in the Street Lights automatically sense the presence of any moving person or vehicle on the road served by the Street Lights so as to brighten up the light and again when the moving person or vehicle moves ahead, the lights left behind are get dimmed and those ahead brighten up to make movement of traffic comfortable, convenient and safe.
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Could you brief us on the most significant upcoming lighting project you are part in?
Earlier this year, Eon Electric had secured contracts worth over Rs 50 crore to install LED streetlights at Jodhpur and Aligarh in a competitive bid involving other leading players. After the successful installation of LED streetlights in these areas, the tender has been expanded to other areas of Rajasthan. Jodhpur being chosen as one of the smart city, smart LED lighting systems could lead the way in developing this city into smart city.
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Industry specialists have projected demand for LED street-lights in India to be worth Rs 39,500 crore by 2020. What strategies has the company employed to turn this to its benefit?
Owing to several measures taken by the government the lighting industry is witnessing a structural shift. Major initiatives of the government for instance replacing conventional streetlights by LED Street Lights provide a significant opportunity for the players in the segments. Eon Electric has an extensive experience of exporting Feeder Pillars for Street Light controls to Power Distribution companies in Middle East and African countries. At Eon, we are now focusing on introducing Street Lights to Municipal Corporations and Power Distribution companies for efficient, cost effective installation and usage of Street Lights.
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The Indian government is laying a lot of thrust on the LED lighting, with an aim to conserve energy. In this regard, do you think that manufacturing sector is all prepared to meet the scaled up target?
With the idea of achieving Nation’s objective of not only becoming self sufficient in LED Lighting to meet the entire country’s requirement but also enhance its production, productivity and performance levels, India can be recognized as one of the best sources for LED Lights all over the world.
This objective and consequent action plan is real and achievable because India has the unique strength of young educated, innovative, committed Engineers who can continue enhancing performance of the LED products, find innovative ways to cut costs and mass produce them to be more competitive and thus meet the global requirements.
With the above objective successfully implemented, Indian LED Industry can make available to India 24X7 electricity supply. Energy conservation is more crucial than equivalent quantum of energy generation. LED bulbs can play a great role here by conserving peak power demand in our country by 10,000 MW daily. If incandescent lamps are replaced by energy-efficient LED Bulbs, it can save almost 100 billion units of power annually, thereby saving up to $7 billion (approx. Rs.43,750 crore) per year at its established level of annual consumption of power. Of course with ever increasing demand for power for Lighting purposes across India, the potential for energy saving and financial benefit will indeed be much more.
Considering the above, the whole LED Lighting industry is gearing up to take the Lighting industry a giant step forward. At EON our focus is always on finding out new and innovative ways of developing new and more efficient LED Lighting products in order to conserve power. We have a strong R&D teams at our plant at Haridwar who are working efficiently and effectively for development of variety of new and more efficient LED Lights with longer life span, more cost effectively apart from manufacturing other varieties of LED Lights including LED Bulbs, LED Tubes and LED Street Lights.
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What measures would you like to propose to curb the penetration of the Chinese lights in India?
The Government needs to incentivize domestic LED manufacturers to boost R&D activities on LED Lights in India by reversing the import tax structure, so that the import duty on complete LED Bulbs may be kept normal or high as in the case of other products, but on every raw material and component which goes into manufacturing of LED Lights in India should be reduced to zero. India has well recognized strength of technically educated and skilled people who can further improve design of LED Lights to deliver improved performance, enhance life of the LED Bulbs and to reduce cost of LED Lights through research on more efficient and lower cost raw materials and components which go into making of these LED Lights. This is imperative for the Indian companies to overcome stiff challenge from cheap low cost Chinese LED makers.
More importantly, the authorities need to take measures against the cheap sub-standard LED lighting products imported through the grey markets and sold across India. It is impossible for domestic manufacturers to compete against the low prices of smuggled products coming through the grey market in India. Although these LED Lights are mostly of sub-standard quality, and the only Indian customers who look for cheaper market price, become a natural prey of importers of sub-standard LED Lights.
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Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is laying a lot of emphasis on “Make in India.” Do you think it will propel the LED industry in India?
While promoting its ‘Make in India’ campaign, the Indian Government is doing a great job of national importance as explained above. However, they must also publicise the fact that for genuine benefit to the Indian consumers and the Nation, the Made in India products should be their only choice, as they fully comply with safety norms and satisfactory performance requirements as laid down in the Indian Standard Specifications.
Above all, the products made in India will give good reason to the Indian buyers and the users to smile with pride of the fact that good quality LED Lights which they use are “Made in India”.
