Panasonic anchors its brand presence

We believe that it is important for us to manufacture in India, especially if you have to do good government projects
Dinesh Aggarwal, Joint Managing Director, Anchor by Panasonic

With an intense rebranding strategy in place to capitalise both brand loyalty of Anchor and Panasonic, Joint Managing Director Dinesh Aggarwal shares his views with EPR magazine on how Panasonic is present beyond Anchor in India and what’s ahead for the coming year.

How do you see the market for solar rooftop solutions in India?
The solar market will continue grow, as there is an increasing acceptance, especially in the industrial and commercial segment, having rooftop captive generation. Earlier, the solar market depended too much on the subsidies from the government, which is not the case right now. People have realised that by investing in a solar plant on rooftop they can get a payback in about five to six years, which is indeed a very good investment to make because after five to six years, they will get free electricity. So with that realisation, I believe that we will continue investing in solar.

Please tell us about your Mecasolar PV trackers offering for the Indian market?
Mecasolar manufacturers tracking systems. We tied up with them to offer the same to the Indian market. India is a high radiation market with radiations available throughout the year, with winter and monsoon recording low levels of radiations. With a tracking system, you are able to change the position of the module as the day goes by. We have seen from experience that it also adds up to 15 to 20 per cent of the generation. So, the investment that you make on tracking systems is recovered in about four to five years.
How do you plan to stay afloat in this competition when you compare with the imported and inexpensive solar modules?
As far rooftop solar is concerned, the biggest constraint is space availability unlike ground-mounted projects, where huge space is required and the cost of land does not matter. A customer’s main criteria is highest generation per squre metre. So, it is on this basis that Panasonic HIT modules offer about 21 to 22 per cent
higher output in lab conditions and about 19 per cent or higher output in actual conditions.

The other criterion the customer is concerned with is what will happen after five years, 10 years, or 20 years. They are concerned about degradation. The problem with most of the other company manufacturers is that their panel starts degrading after few years. However, Panasonic guarantees 20 years degradation, which is hardly less than five per cent.

Is there any plan to manufacture PV in India?
We are not ruling it out. We haven’t totally decided whether it would be Panasonic module or Anchor module. We believe that it is important for us to manufacture in India, especially if you have to do good government projects. Today, we are not able to do the government projects because it is mandatory to have a ‘Made in India’ module. The government is already a very big business and it will continue to be a very large business. So, we may consider to work, not with our own manufacturing, but with the local manufacturers. So, yes, we look forward to venture into it. It will really boost our Business-to-Government (B2G).

Apart from the upcoming manufacturing facility in Andhra Pradesh, which are the other facilities Panasonic have in India? What percentage of capacity is utilised at this point?
Presently, we have three facilities in Daman, one factory in Gujarat and two factories in Haridwar. The installed capacity is around 70 per cent.

Walk us through how rebranding from Anchor to Panasonic happened?
The rebranding is only of the company, so in terms of product brands, we continue to use the Panasonic and Anchor as our brands, which we have been doing from the date of acquisition.

To explain more about the structure of Panasonic; earlier it was Panasonic Electric Works and Panasonic Corporations; all then amalgamated into one company in 2012. Post that, Panasonic
globally had four verticals, which were not listed companies, but were virtual ones within Panasonic Company.

Our parent company was Eco Solutions Company where we had home appliances, automotive and industrial systems, and connected network systems. From this year, the ES Company has changed its name to Panasonic Life Solutions
Limited. So we thought it’s a good opportunity to change our name as well to be in line with our parent company.

This has been pending since a long time. In the initial years after acquisition, we intentionally did not change the name of the company from Anchor to Panasonic because there were a lot of things that needed to be set right in terms of various compliances, the legalities involving what internal standard product quality should be considered for systems, and so on.

Now, since we have come a long way, we believe that rightfully we have become Panasonic, so, we decided to change the name at this stage.

Considering the pollution levels, especially in cities like Delhi; do you think government also should take some measures or mandates on it?
Yes, the government is trying to do what it can. The government has a strong intention on EV. Two years ago, the government announced to make it 100 per cent EV by 2022, which is not realistic.
What the government needs to do is incentivise the purchase of EV.

My belief is that first the government will support the public mode of transport. The buses, to start with, will start getting converted into electric buses as they are the most polluting ones.

Then, I think the government will start encouraging, in parallel, the commercial passenger cars, either by giving some kind of incentive on the taxation such as road taxes or subsidising the manufacturing, which will lead to higher adoption of EV.

Apart from that, the government is becoming stronger on industrial pollution control. All our factories are 100 per cent compliant and we have seen that the local authorities are very strict about it, which is really commendable.

How is Panasonic contributing to India’s Smart City mission?
We are a member of Smart City Council. Panasonic has done business for surveillance in Indore and Bhopal also with supply of our street lights to Indore. We also participated in the Amritsar Smart City Tender for street lighting. So, there are actually, nearly, five or six projects currently in progress.

However, no smart cities are being planned together from the ground up. It is all happening in bits and pieces; one city may have surveillance, the other city will have LED street lighting and another city will be solar powered.

So, what we’re looking forward is to have green field streetlight smart cities announced at the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor, where we are expecting a lot of Japanese financing to happen. I am sure that we will play a big role in providing financial solution.

What are the solutions by Panasonic that will go into the smart cities?
There are lots of solutions that are available to the Indian market, staring from the solar storage, energy storage, surveillance, centralised command centre in terms of monitoring the various parts of the city, electric vehicles and electric vehicle chargers.

If the government goes a step further and decides on the specification of the houses in terms of energy usage, then many of our products can go in because rooftop solar and all our appliances that our group company makes consume less electricity and can go into smart city.

To be honest, without Anchor as a partner, I think it’s almost impossible to enter the India for electrical market. Fortunately we could acquire Anchor, the number one brand, and that I would say is one of the best scenarios from the Panasonic point of view. It takes us directly to number one place.
Tetsuyasu Kawamoto San, Joint Managing Director, Anchor by Panasonic