With over 54 years of experience in advising customers on their best acquisition approach, by providing rent, purchase, and leasing options that best fit their needs. In India, the firm is operating since a decade from their offices in Gurgaon-NCR and Bangalore. With the merger of Microlease and Electro Rent’s business operations, Electro Rent is a world leader in smart solutions for test equipment. In an interview with Mr. Ajay Gulati, Sr. VP Sales & Business Development, Electro Rent India talks about company growth, market opportunities and new plans.
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Mr. Ajay Gulati, Electro Rent What are the emerging trends in the T&M sector in India?
The growth of India’s test and measurement market is primarily due to the technological advancement in the healthcare sector with demand for high-end types of medical equipment and the growth of the electronics industry in India. Along with the steady rise in the use of smart devices and wireless technologies, the country is also preparing to embrace the next era of technological innovations (5G and related). Another important shift that India is going through is that more players in the ESDM sector are realigning their focus from pure-play systems or product design to other aspects such as Original Design Manufacturing, Product Development, In-house production of innovative devices or service, and others. These crucial shifts are paving way for demand in high-performance testing equipment.
Other notable factors common across industries in India are that the players are being increasingly careful with their investment in testing and measurement equipment as the life cycle of products are getting shorter due to continuous innovation. As a result, the companies are adopting frugal models of business operations and are recognizing various benefits of rental facilities.
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What is your business model or how does it work?
So the renting model works as per the requirement of our customer and availability of the equipment as well. People take it for 6 months or for 12 months etc. Occasionally somebody wants it for a week because the equipments are expensive. We got major inventory basis from the US, UK, Malaysia, China, India etc and we ship the equipment all over the world.
We are a one-stop-shop for testing and measurement requirements. Our customers vary from really big bodies. We are renting to various sectors, such as Aerospace/Defense, Mobile/Computing including 5G, LTE, LTE-Advanced, Semiconductor Based Companies, Power & Industrial, Automotive Electronics, Medical Electronics, Education and Research, New Space, Data Products, IOT Companies, and Sub Contractors.
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What sort of Clients you have in the Indian Market?
We have clients across various sectors. Let’s start with telecom, Telecom at top of the value chain or the ecosystem is telecom operators and also there are the network equipment providers and then we have the subcontractors of the service companies who are doing most of the installation and maintenance for the networks that the operators are deploying. Most of them across the ecosystem are our customers in India.
In other sectors like in RF & Semiconductor, Microwave, R&D companies, R&D labs who are engaged in new product development, engineering services companies who are doing product validations for some of the product OEM companies they happen to be our customers.
We also have customers in Manufacturing, some of the cable and antenna manufacturers are our customers and we have customers in Handset and contract manufacturing it’s a new segment emerged in India in the last couple of years. Apart from these, Automotive Industry is one of major costumers.
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Are there any opportunities for Electro rent in India?
Fiber deployment, 5G, smart cities, IoT, Manufacturing, Data Centre is the areas in which we see our future growth in. We acquired a US-based company Rush Computers, now a part of Electro Rent. They focus on a product line which is particularly IT & data centers.
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What challenges you have faced so far?
We deal with companies that are frontrunners in innovative product or service offerings and by their virtue, they think many steps ahead of what is in trend. And recruiting multi-talented individuals to help us serve our customers often poses a challenge for us. We keep devising employee training workshops and training sessions to address this issue at our end. Other challenges include complex EXIM regulations and constantly changing rules in terms of taxation or related.
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What are your Key USP’s?
As a brand, Electro Rent has over 54 years of experience in advising customers on their best acquisition approach, by providing rent, purchase, and leasing, second-hand purchase and Asset Management options to best fit their needs. With global support, pan India delivery capabilities and hassle-free logistics solutions available in tier-1 /2 and 3 cities, Electro Rent successfully engaged with strategic/big accounts from semiconductor, electronic manufacturers, engineering services and telecom operators network equipment manufacturers and adding new customers/ start ups and other electronic and engineering segments. Along with this, Electro Rent owns the largest global inventory of 1 lac products worldwide and manages 8000+ product lines worth USD 1 billion. We are highly equipped to make quick availability of desired equipment with hassle-free processes. Hence, businesses have more power to manage their CAPEX and other recourses with ease.
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What are your expansion & growth plans for the upcoming years?
Our 10-year journey in India has been phenomenal and during the course, we have seen many Indian businesses achieving their goals with help from relevant equipment in place. With the merger of Microlease and Livington brands as Electro Rent, we are now able to better serve the market through an expanded equipment fleet and broader geographical coverage. This will also help us ensure better availability levels and a higher level of technical service, as India plans to introduce better medical equipment, roll out 5G service, open data centers, and do a lot more to offer better services to its citizens.
