Japan's consumer electronics major Panasonic plans to double its headcount in India to 20,000 in the next two years, with the commissioning of its new manufacturing facility at Jhajjar in Haryana.
The company's Indian arm, Panasonic India, is currently investing Rs 1,000 crore to set up the new plant, spread over 37,000 square meters. It will be operational by 2012.
"We have around 10,000 employees in India at the moment. We look to double it in two years," CEO Daizo Ito said.
"When we start manufacturing at Jhajjar, we will have nearly 20,000 employees," he added.
The new plant will be mainly for home appliances like air conditioners and washing machines. It will also be used for welding for third-party customers like automobiles industry (welding of car, motorbike) and the construction industry, Ito added.
In order to gauge the requirements of its Indian customers, the company has also set up a research and development (R&D) centre at Gurgaon.
"The R&D centre has already been set up and activities have started there. The facility is doing market research for products specifically for Indian market," he said.
Currently, the centre has 12 people and the company plans to add another 200 people by the end of next year.
Panasonic India had a turnover of Rs 4,500 crore for the year ended March 31, including the sales generated by its recently acquired entities, Sanyo Electric and Anchor.
The Indian arm's sales was nearly 2-3 per cent of Panasonic's total overseas sales. Out of the Japanese firm's overall turnover, overseas sales account for 50 per cent and the rest coming from its domestic sales.
Commenting on prospects in India, Ito said the company is aiming to increase turnover from the country and expects to contribute about 5 per cent of Panasonic's total overseas sales by 2012.
"By 2018, we hope to achieve nearly 10 per cent of Panasonic's overseas sales from Indian market," Ito said.
The company, which reported 200 per cent growth in the past three years in India, is looking to continue with the trend for the next two more years.
"India is the most important country and market for growth for us," Ito added.
Globally, Panasonic is aiming to become top green innovation company in the electronics industry by 2018 and is laying a lot of emphasis on eco-friendly products.
The company is targeting sales of nearly 3 trillion yen from eco-friendly energy systems business by 2018, out of the projected total sales of 10 trillion yen.
For the year ended March 31, the company posted net sales of 7,418 billion yen.
Even in India, the company plans to introduce green products like solar cell and fuel cell co-generation systems, that will be modified according to the market requirements here.
"The R&D centre will help us figure out the need of the market. Accordingly we will introduce products here. We will try to use India components as much as we can, to bring in cost effectiveness," Ito said.
The company would be importing the products from Japan and China and has no plans to set up a manufacturing site in India.
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