Q.1Please enlighten us about the journey of Eaton in India. What are the products and services available for the Indian market? 

 

Eaton entered India in 1999 through the global acquisition of Aeroquip Vickers. India today forms a key part of Eaton’s overall business strategy with continued expansion of the company manufacturing, marketing, engineering and services footprint in the country.Eaton has focused on enhancing its presence in India in all business segments and on tapping into the diverse opportunities that the country offers, including critical manufacturing and engineering capabilities, product development, service centers and globally competitive sourcing. While India offers a huge market opportunity in itself, it also serves as a strategic location to enhance Eaton’s global competitiveness.Today, with 5500+ employees, 8 manufacturing sites, presence in 19 key locations and over twenty years of proven capabilities, Eaton is uniquely positioned to play a distinct part in the country’s growth story. Eaton’s India Professional Services Center with 2000+ employees offers a spectrum of capabilities from an integrated facility in Pune. The Center enables Eaton globally to innovate,enhance efficiencies, strengthen its customer focus and create value. Eaton’s Supply Chain Center of Excellence in Pune partners with Eaton plants and Supply Chain teams across the world in their

sustained endeavors towards enhancing their overall operational efficiencies.The Eaton India Innovation Center in Pune, with its 1900+ strong workforce is driving engineeringand R&D projects for all of Eaton’s global businesses. Eaton’s Electrical business in India is geared up to provide power distribution, power quality and back-up, control and automation, power monitoring and management solutions and services to commercial, residential, utility, alternative energy, IT and data centers, public sector institutional and OEMs. Eaton’s commitment to the Indian market has been solidified by the booming Telecom and IT enabled services market and the tremendous infrastructure growth in India. Eaton’s Electrical business in India consistently meets the demands of today’s economy with its comprehensive line of products and solutions

Our solutions range from UPS to circuit breakers to MV/LV switchgear to machine controls to Fusegear to monitoring software solutions. We offer a full portfolio of backup power and surge protection, providing maximum uptime and guarding against power surges or outages. Our comprehensive portfolio of end-to-end electrical solutions is complemented by our full-scale engineering and support services.

 

Q.2How has the second wave of the pandemic affected business? How the company is managing risks and ensuring business continuity during the second wave?

 

Businesses worldwide are dealing with varying concerns such as stress on working capital, supply chain disruption, and forced realignment of investments and projects. Eaton is over 110 years old and has survived depressions, recessions, and other economic crises. Learning from first wave, we quickly realign ourselves and adapted to the new normal way of conducting business. We leveraged our Eaton Business System (EBS) tools to optimise our operations and business processes to make our operations lean and agile by weeding out inefficiencies.  While responding to market demands, we emphasised on employee safety, support to our key stakeholders and maintain our position as global leaders in the market.

 

Q.3Could you brief us about the performance of Eaton and about the overall performance of the industry?

 

Electrical Equipment Market in India will witness $ 33.74 Billion growth during 2021-2025 as per industry sources. The market is fragmented, and the degree of fragmentation will accelerate during the forecast period. Rise in power generation from renewable energy sources to boost growthAlthough the economic crisis had a profound impact on our end markets in 2020, we delivered better-than-expected financial results and had one of our best years ever in total shareholder returns. This is clear evidence of how we’re becoming a stronger company. We created the Eaton Digital Office and launched our new market-facing Brightlayer™ platform. Our other key focus is to leverage our leadership in providing efficient solutions to accelerate the global energy transition.  Energy transition is an increasingly used industry term that covers three related macro trends – first is the ever increasing electrification of buildings and transport, the second is that within electricity, we see a major shift in the fuel source that create that electricity from coal and natural gas to renewables such as solar and wind. And then finally, the structure of electricity generation is changing with a dramatic rise in distributed energy resources. For example, solar at your home or in the office building.

 

Q.4 What are the special initiatives taken by the organization for the wellbeing of the employees?

 

One of our business goals is to ensure the safety, health, and well-being of our employees, and we take that very seriously. We are follow all the safety and hygiene guidelines defined by WHO and local health authorities. All sites are strictly following laid down protocols which include self-screening, sanitizing, temperature monitoring, social distancing and other processes. Our teams have received trainings on COVID-19 awareness and precautions. In addition to this, we have introduced various policies to support hybrid work model. We regularly conduct townhall and address the challenges faced by our employees.

 

Q.5 What are some of the new and promising technology trends that are shaping the Indian electrical equipment industry?

 

2021 promises to be a year of hope and optimism. Despite the challenges of ill-fated 2020, current backdrop of recovery in global sentiment, bounce back in local demand, and ample liquidity provides a supportive launchpad for India to lead the journey of economic recovery in 2021. Indian power sectoris expected to play a crucial role in this recovery.Few trends that will impact Indian power sector in 2021.

Technology:While the sector has been undergoing an overhaul over the last few years, the coronavirus pandemic underscored the need of accelerated technological upgradation. Going forward, the focus on implementation of smart technologies like an evolved grid system, smart metering, digital asset management will help transform the seemingly traditional, manpower-heavy sector into a smarter, more efficient power system with each element in the value chain re-imagining their processes and streamlining infrastructure. Green Energy:Renewable energy is expected to form 70% of fresh capacity expansion expected over the next 5 years. This would help achieve India’s commitment to increase renewable share in total generation to 40% by fiscal 2030 from current 25% as part of the Paris climate deal. Transmission:Going forward, significant development in the transmission sector would be triggered by the aggressive renewable expansion plans. Large scale grid connected solar and wind plants are usually located in the far-flung areas, where there is limited existing transmission infrastructure. Renewable power generating companies have urged for adequate grid availability in the past. This will urgently need an expansion of grid connectivity in the next two years to be able to accomplish the renewable energy target.

 

Q.6 How is Eaton transforming itself to cater to the emerging needs of the Indian electrical industry?

 

In continuation with enlarging our manufacturing footprint we have laid out a state-of-the-art production line for manufacturing RMU’s in the Pondicherry plant equipped with high precision robotic welding machines; 100KV die electric and partial discharge test capabilities; upgraded our power quality test laboratories for various simulation tests and now possess the capability of testing UPS with loads of over 2MW; and real time

capturing of auto clave steaming process with SCADA capabilities in the manufacturing of semiconductor fuses.

 

Q.7 How technologies like IoT, Big Data and other smart technologies are helping the industry in survival?

 

The global manufacturing industry is undergoing a massive overhaul, with the advent of the fourth industrial revolution—Industry 4.0. Add to that, the pandemic has accelerated the pace of digital transformation to meet the evolving demand and challenges of manufacturing, logistics, and supply chain. Digital connectivity exists across the manufacturing floor, electric grid, buildings, healthcare facilities, transportation and in the home. We are innovating Intelligent Power solutions that collect data, learn and provide actionable insights to optimize power use and continuity. 

We make the “things” that make the Internet of Things work. Our electrical, aerospace, hydraulic and vehicle products and services live at the origin of data. And with that data, we help our customers operate more efficiently than ever.

 

Q.8 What are your top priorities for Eaton for the next one to two years? What are the company’s growth plans?

 

We will be introducing new UPS & Power distribution products with the latest technologies which would improve efficiencies, reliability and modularity further. We will also be introducing digital solutions in the form of software suites and other digital services for our customers which would help them to monitor and manage their assets and sites remotely. There is also a large focus to transform the capabilities of our employees and channel partners to embrace the new technology and social normal.