Wipro ventures into furniture, LED lights

Wipro's Consumer Care and Lighting division has announced entry into office modular furniture and LED-based (light emitting diode) lighting products.

LED is expected to be the future technology for lighting and is useful for creating interesting lighting effects both in interior and exterior work spaces.

"Since we have been in the business of lighting, we see a lot of synergy between furniture and lighting. Customers often go to different vendors for satisfying both these requirements. We are using the same fundamentals in the furniture business too. We have also invested in a professional team," Vineet Agrawal, president, Wipro Consumer Care & Lighting.

Since LED technology is yet to take off in India, Agrawal feels that Wipro will initially have to resort to concept selling.

"Commercial acceptability in India for LED is just gaining ground. While it is already being used in cell phones and traffic signals, we feel that it can be aptly used for outdoors, facades and landscapes," Agrawal added.

According to Anuj Dhir, marketing manager-Wipro Lighting, this unit is backed with service commitment through a wide network of 15 branches and over 100 stockists.

As part of annual Light Show, where Wipro displays its latest lighting solutions, the company also showcased products for outdoor landscape applications which include a new range of architectural streetlights, Fantasy Heritage and Pathways to light up the exterior workspaces.

On the office modular furniture, the company has several captive vendors and will scale up as the need arises. It has already installed over 6,000 workstations for both Wipro and other customers in Bangalore.

"We work very closely with our customers. We have invested in space planning and product design teams. We have also invested in back-end operations and have extended our offering to Wipro facilities and even 14 non-Wipro consumers," Parag Kulkarni, general manager, Furniture Business, said.

Wipro estimates that the market size for Office Modular Furniture is at Rs 550 crore and growing at about 30 per cent per year.

For the second quarter ended 30 September 2004, Wipro Consumer Care and Lighting business recorded revenues of Rs 116 crore with a Profit Before Income Tax of Rs 16.7 crore.

During the same quarter, this division contributed to 6 per cent of the total revenue and 4 per cent of the profit before interest and taxes for Wipro.