Widex eyes $1 mn exports for digital hearing aids

Widex India, a subsidiary of the $250 million Widex Aps, Denmark, one of the largest manufacturers of hearing aids, is eyeing $1 million of exports from its proposed plant in Chandigarh for CAD/CAM-based value addition and customisation of digital hearing aids.

Presently, the company designs and customises the digital hearing aids for the Indian and nearby markets manually, after sourcing them from Denmark.

With the new plant to be functional soon, the company is looking for an overall turnover of US$ 2 million including domestic market from CAD/CAM-based facility, stated T S Anand, Managing Director, Widex India Pvt Ltd.

He added that under its manual operations the company holds a 50 per cent share of the 20,000 odd digital hearing aids market in India.

On the company's investment plans, Anand said, "We have invested Rs 5 crore for setting up at least 24 Senso Hearing Centres in the country. Apart from that, in the next 12 months we intend to invest around Rs 16 crore for enhancement of our present infrastructure which includes setting up a CAD/CAM-based facility for value addition and customisation of our digital hearing aids in Chandigarh.

Also, part of the investment would go in setting up a training institute 'Widex Institute of Speech & Hearing' in Chandigarh to train audiologists."

The institute will offer BSc and MSc degrees in audiology and around 20 and 10 students for each course respectively will be admitted annually. The institute will begin its operations in 2008, said Anand.

"Although the annual turnout of students from the institute will be 30, India requires 30,000 audiologists in the next five years and there is still a paucity of trained audiologists in the country," said Anand.

Meanwhile, under its expansion plans, Widex India is expecting to take the number of Senso Hearing Centres to 100 in the next five years. Senso Hearing Centres are exclusive hearing and speech therapy clinics with diagnostic and dispensing services. The company will be tying up with local professionals in cities like Hyderabad, Chennai, Ahmedabad and others for these centres.

With a growth rate of 40 per cent per annum, Widex India had a sales of 10,000 digital hearing aids last year and is expecting a sales of 1 lakh in the next five years. One of the first firms to manufacture digital hearing aids, in 1996, Widex estimates the global market for hearing aids, of which 96 per cent is digital and 4 per cent analog, at 8 million pieces.

For fiscal 2006-07, Widex India had a turnover of Rs 16 crore and expects to do a turnover of Rs 22 crore in fiscal 2007-08.