Philips India is investing around Rs 300 crore in the expansion of its manufacturing facilities and has plans to hire around 1,000 people as part of that initiative, a top company official said.
The company is expanding its manufacturing facility at Chakan near Pune as part of its Make-in-India initiative.
Philips has already started to ship out its Affiniti range of ultrasound machines from there and has also planned to roll out magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) components from the expanded facility.
Philips, which is celebrating its 90th anniversary in India, has started manufacturing ofI consoles, Magnetic Resonance Imaging etc. It is also exportingI components to various markets.
We are talking about an investment of Rs 250-300 crore and also we are talking about a thousand new employees that we are hiring. They are very sophisticated engineers, with different types of skills that we are looking at hiring, Philips Indian Subcontinent Vice-Chairman & Managing Director Daniel Mazon told PTI.
Also Read
Make in India is a strategic initiative for Philips, which is becoming stronger from this investment in the expansion of the manufacturing capacity.
We are dealing with the short term challenges that we have, but we believe in the long term also. We are making significant investments, Mazon added.
On being asked about the time frame, he said this is going to take 2 to 3 years.
The ultrasound (Affiniti), we have inaugurated and started shipping to customers. InI, we are finalising that. We are continuing to expand the factory, we are doing construction, he added.
Sharing more details, Mazon said that ultrasound machines would be for the domestic market only.
Ultrasound machines - we will not be exporting. We are making them in India for India right now. We are exportingI components to the world," he said.
The company is working with the local industry and is developing an ecosystem for that.
There are so many components on anI. We are starting with the components and then that is also shipped to other parts of the world So India is a very important industrial footprint for theI components for now. We are walking with the local industry, developing the ecosystem and being part of makingIs in India. It's quite exciting, he said.
The company has already started construction of the building and other infrastructure, required fromI.
And right now we do not have our facility operating at full capacity because we are really working only with the critical things.
"But depending on when we can open that factory to start operating as planned; it could be this year or it could be pushed to the next. It all really depends on when our employees can come back to work and continue operations there, he said.
Besides, Chakan, Philips will also expand its operation at Bengaluru, where it is setting up a new campus, which would be ready in the next three years.
But also at the same time we have big plans for the future and that is not just in the Chakan factory in Pune. The same thing we are doing in our Bengaluru facility. We have our digital footprint over there, Mazon said.
"The new campus that we are building near the airport in Bengaluru and which we will be inaugurating by 2023 will be able to house 5,000 employees," he added.
Disclaimer: No Business Standard Journalist was involved in creation of this content
