Honeywell will double its India business in next 3-5 years: Ashish Modi

Modi talks about the key trends shaping the industry and growth drivers for the company, in a face-to-face interview with Ayushman Baruah in Bengaluru

In February this year, American multinational conglomerate Honeywell appointed Ashish Modi president for its India operations. India is a key talent hub for Honeywell, accounting for about 13,000 employees out of its total workforce of 99,000. In a face-to-face interview in Bengaluru, Modi tells Ayushman Baruah that India presents opportunities for the company in sectors like aviation, defence, infrastructure, and energy transition. Edited excerpts:   

What are your key priorities? What are some of the trends shaping your industry?
 

A. The first is the aviation and defence boom in the country. We believe India will become the third-largest aviation market in the world. We have a large aerospace business, which benefits from that. So, our destiny, in a way, is linked to how the aviation market does, and that is one of the macros. The second macro is the whole change in our country’s defence spend and strategy, as the government is pushing for localisation of the platforms and moving away from traditional countries. The third macro is the whole infrastructure story in India. The fourth big macro is sustainability and energy transition.

Our second-largest business for Honeywell globally is what we call Performance Materials and Technologies (PMT), a nearly $11 billion business for us, which basically supplies technology to the industrial space. The fifth trend is around ‘Make in India’. For us, ‘Make in India’ is not just taking the existing products and localising it or making it in India, but actually catering to the mass mid segment through a different brand altogether. The last trend is digital. About 4-5 years ago, we made a big shift to say that we are not only an industrial company, but we are a software industrial company, and at that point, something called Honeywell Connected was born.

What is your strategy for the India market?
 

A. We will double our India business in the next 3-5 years depending on how the macros play out, and each of the growth vectors that I just spoke about will help us grow. The products that are being made here in India are being made for both global and local. So, by and large, every product that is made for the global market also gets sold in India. Our engineering and technology centre in India is the largest engineering centre outside of the US.

To fuel this growth, are there any hiring plans?
 

A. Hiring will be commensurate with our growth. We will be adding people in the product development side because a lot of that happens out of India. To that extent, all the technology product managers and product development people have to be added in India. Associated with that, manufacturing has to be done in India, for India. For example, we just announced our airport ground lighting manufacturing facility in India last week in Gurgaon. We will keep adding people there. Apart from that, we will have to add sales and commercial go-to-market people.

What is the opportunity from the government sector?
 

A. A large part of the capex (capital expenditure) in the country comes from the government, so that is inarguably one of the largest growth vectors. For example, a large portion of our building infrastructure business comes from the government. If you look at our PMT or industrial business, a large part of it comes from the government. Then in our defence business too, the government is one of the largest spenders.

Has the global economic slowdown impacted your business in any way?
 

A. Not yet, because our domestic demand story continues to be very strong. Of course, we are part of a global business and present across markets that were impacted by factors like inflation and rate cuts. But in India, except for the forex pressure, we see that demand continues to be strong.