We've grown 2-3 times faster than India's GDP: Honeywell India chief

In a Q&A, Akshay Bellare, the president of Honeywell India, says Covid-19 has come as an opportunity and that he expects double-digit growth in the country over the next five years

For Honeywell India, Covid-19 has come as an opportunity. Akshay Bellare, India president, believes remote operations and data management are among the key areas of the company's growth in the country. In an interview to Shine Jacob, Bellare lines up the firm's roadmap in India and expects double-digit growth over the next five years. Edited Excerpts:

With a diversified portfolio, do you see Covid as an opportunity?

Companies are delaying large capital expenditure plans because of low demand and so on. When we go into the software domain, what we are creating is higher productivity. We are trying to enable our customers to extract more profitability for their assets. I think that makes our software very powerful. To my mind, those projects may get delayed because of demand challenges, but the technologies that we are offering--whether it is remote monitoring or Honeywell Forge--are more critical for customers during these times because you are maximising your asset utilisation.

What kind of potential did you see in the India market?

Each business is impacted in different ways. There are certain businesses that are growing during these times, while some others are facing challenges. That is the beauty of Honeywell's diversified portfolio.

  

There are a lot of smart cities coming up. The government still is spending on infrastructure. E-commerce is getting much more significance. All of us now sit at home and more people are ordering things online. This means warehousing and logistics technologies are becoming more critical, where our Honeywell technologies are extremely useful. We have safety solutions concept and building solutions, all these sectors are offering good opportunities for us and we are pivoting into those.

In some verticals, like airline or oil and gas, there is a slowdown. In these, we see some challenges in the next six months. To me, it is about how we can pivot to areas that are growing rapidly for us. It can actually maximise our performance during these difficult times. I am positive about our ability to offer technologies where I see significant growth -- for example, safe building, warehouse automation, remote operations, smart cities, data centre management, building management system and healthcare and pharmaceuticals. Honeywell as a whole is feeling good about the future and we will be able to weather the storm created by this pandemic.

Compared to your global revenue of over $40 billion, the Indian share is minuscule. What are your plans for India?

In the context of the amount of growth, if you look at Honeywell India, in the past two decades, we have grown two or three times faster than the GDP of the country. Traditionally, India has been a big part of the growth story for Honeywell. We have a very good track record here. Of course, the pandemic has given a bit of challenge for us, for all companies globally. The second quarter was difficult for all companies because of the lockdown. We are looking forward to things getting better in the next quarter. We see growth coming from certain areas where we are well-positioned to offer our services.

The future for Honeywell is bright. Our CAGR for the Indian market is going to be at least two to three times GDP growth. We just put together our strategic plans and when the country grows, we actually do better than twice that. We are looking at double-digit growth for the next five years.

With Covid becoming a catalyst for remote working, how is Honeywell adapting to this makeover?

In all sectors, including oil and gas, digital transformation is happening. I believe this pandemic has actually accelerated the transformation in operational technology space. Now, more and more importance is being given for digital transformation as more remote operation can be done without actually being at the location. We feel very good about remote operations that we are able to do as a result of our technologies. Similarly, Honeywell Forge increases the ability of workers to remotely connect, gather data, get information that can be put together by its powerful tool and that is why we are excited about it.

You mentioned about Forge. Honeywell recently had a tie-up with Cairn for their enterprise performance management software. What are the advantages of this?

Cairn was looking to digitise their workflow. They were going for digital transformation, largely driven by their desire to improve their productivity, brand efficiency and enable their workers to work remotely. We offer analytical software through Honeywell Forge -- that provides real-time data, visual intelligence and offers secure cloud technologies.  

When we talk about Honeywell Forge, it is an enterprise performance management system. This is for manufacturing, industrial operations. It brings together the equipment process and people and by doing that, provides actionable information. This allows us to monitor things on a real-time basis. When we think about Forge, we have to think about all different aspects of an enterprise -- maintenance and reliability, efficiency and utilisation; how to optimise the output. Digitisation.ensures that data is collected from different systems and then be provided with insights. That is the objective of Honeywell Forge. It maximises, efficiency, effectiveness, safety and profitability for any enterprise.