India Inc could be losing as much as Rs 20,000 crore annually in direct losses owing to poor power quality and operating environment related downtime, according to a study by leading research based consulting firm Feedback Consulting.
The study which was commissioned by Manufacturers Association of Information Technology (Mait) and Emerson Network Power was carried out during August- September 2002 and covered 325 Indian firms and spread over six locations. Eight industry segments of telecom, IT services, IT enabled services, ISPs, banking and finance, services sector and the manufacturing sector were covered.
The loss of around Rs 20,000 crore has been estimated at about 2 per cent of the gross output of the total industrial and service sectors. In fact ,according to the study, the loss could be much higher if the indirect losses were also taken into account.
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Commenting on the study, Vinnie Mehta, executive director Mait, said, "Corporate India would gradually move towards a customer assurance and satisfaction strategy where network uptime would be of key importance. This would be done through investments in the best solutions with the trend towards a quasi-networked business environment hastening the process."
Some other findings of the study include power disruption as a more common occurrence than expected with over 60 per of the firms experiencing a power disruption more than once a month.
Downtime owing to power and air-conditioning failures were also considered inevitable with 79 per cent of the respondents attributing the fact to unscheduled power cuts and poor power quality.
Over 75 per cent of respondents have invested in back up power quality products which has helped stem some of the potential business losses. However with an increasingly networked environment, making right choices on these investments were of key importance, the study suggested.
The telecom, IT, ISP and process manufacturing sectors were most responsive to uptime criticality with adequate technology driven power conditioning and air conditioning solutions considered essential to protect and extend life of high value equipment.