'We are investing a lot': This French multinational looks at India as its next big manufacturing hub

French multinational Schneider Electric is betting big on India’s economic growth to make it centre stage of its operations to developing new technologies for the world, a senior company official has said.

“We have created one of the four hubs in India to not only develop and bring solutions to India – already our third biggest market globally – but also to see how we can support our future growth here,” said Manish Pant, executive vice president of international operations at the energy management and automation conglomerate Schneider Electric.

Pant said the country possessed plenty of young talent with strong digital skills. Crediting the country for having kickstarted the digital revolution through the launch of business process outsourcing (BPOs) in the 2000s, he said it was time to further leverage that talent pool.

“As we move into episode two of digitalisation, which is the movement away from the personal internet to the internet of machines, we have to see how to prepare Schneider to be ahead of the curve,” he remarked.

Schneider currently has 30 manufacturing units in India and employs 34,500 people, its largest headcount globally.

“We are investing a lot here. As we speak, we are building five new factories to be ready for the capacity that will be required for India as well as the rest of the world,” he informed.

As the country significantly expanded its electricity consumption per capita to 10,000 kilowatt hours (kWh) by 2047 from the present 1,200 kWh, he especially saw energy transition as offering an attractive growth proposition.

“Electricity will become the largest portion of the energy mix to support economic growth. From 20 per cent today it is going to increase to 50 per cent. This transition is bound to happen because the biggest source of carbon emissions is energy itself,” he explained.

Calling electricity, the best vector for decarbonisation, he said that given India’s long coastline and tropical weather, this transformation would be propelled by increased adoption of renewable sources of energy such as wind and solar on the supply side and complemented by digitalisation.

“The world may be moving from brown to green but the challenge before India is to adopt green from day one,” he observed.

Pant said the renewable sources of energy could reach electricity to the remotest corners of India through the decentralised generation and Schneider could provide solutions in terms of managing the volatility of generation, storage and baseload. It had the technology to make the grid “smart and resilient to be able to take all of these multiple sources at different times as well as to optimise demand” for both large-scale utilities and microgrids.

Another key vertical for the company was green hydrogen and it was already working on a project with HPCL to manufacture the commodity.

“We have a complete architecture starting with the generation of solar energy to the time the hydrogen is ready for transportation,” he informed.

Referring to the importance of skilled manpower in ensuring electricity access to millions in India, he said the company had to date trained more than 1.8 lakh people at its 400 training centres all over the country.

“These grassroots-level trained electricians then go on to support communities,” said Pant.

Also Read: Spanish packaging firm Inden Pharma to expand footprint in India

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