Text: Bhargav TS
Automotive industry in India is becoming more demanding in terms of lighting solutions. Looking in to the young population and increasing buying capacity of the end users, vehicle manufactures are demanding more in terms of functional and aesthetic contents of the lamps. In India trend is towards the migration from conventional bulb type to LEDs and projectors. With lot of industries getting digitalised of late, lighting industry’s digitalisation is the adoption of LEDs. By and large LEDs are the digital era of lighting. Lumax Industires, is into LED lighting for quite a long time now. “We have our own design and manufacturing plant for electronics at Manesar and we do get supported by our JV partner Stanley. By next fiscal, more than 10% of our lighting would be in LED as the auto industries have started LED adoption mentioned, Mohit Sehgal, Sr. Vice President, Marketing and Business Development, Lumax Industries.
Though majority of two-and four-wheelers are still using halogen lamps, LEDs will be popularised very soon. The lack of awareness is due to the lack of standard formulations. There is no doubt that lighting technologies are moving more towards LED as a light source. It is obvious that lighting in automotive is becoming intelligent with the use of micro-controllers and sensors. As green environment slogan is pervasive, usage of LEDs will support the slogan with a good vigour as these are eco friendly.
The migration from conventional filament and halogen bulbs to LEDs is comparatively expensive but with voluminous production and the frugal adoption the cost will be optimised very soon. In the coming years this new technology will be the common platform for majority of the lamps. LEDs will be sold soon at a competitive price with the above mentioned voluminous manufacturing in place. Not to over emphasise, the mass production has started in certain companies and LED lamps will be rolled out in the market soon. Our lighting solutions to auto industries will benefit them in many ways, stated Sehgal.
“We should sell and proclaim ourselves as leader in LED technology but that requires us to edge in terms of price and quality. Our joint venture with Stanley helped us innovate and with those innovations we tapped lot of markets. We have 2 R&D centers – one in North and other in West working with the concept of self reliance. We have a design studio in the west to look into future trends of technology in lighting. As mentioned, with Stanley we underwent innovations in lighting solutions and the same is supplied to Maruti and Honda. The newly launched Maruti Suzuki S-Cross head Lamp and HCIL’s Jazz tail lamp wear our LEDs. M&M’s XUV 500 and Activa’s head and tail lamp also have our LEDs.” averred Sehgal.
Growth in this industry is promising as lot of manufacturers are realising the need of LEDs. The company’s growth is penned as 5-6% this year against the last year. The company has enough capacity to satiate the demands of OEMs. With growing demands they could still manage with the existing capacity and no new investments are planned this year for the expansion. However when growth gets accelerated, plans for capacity building will be contemplated.
Looking in to the current market trend, Lumax is able to bag the orders from OEMs like MSIL, HMSI, TML, TKM, HCIL, M&M and TML. for new technology lamps for the upcoming models although being expensive as compared to the conventional lighting solutions. Lumax introduced LED tail lamp in two-wheeler 7-8 years back in a high volume model. This could only be possible by optimising the design. Lumax takes ownership to bring expensive technologies to mass market and endeavors to right fit the technologies in the OEM sockets.
The northern part of India is already saturated and the vehicle manufactures are not on the look-out of new establishments there. As the company already has enough capacity in northern part of India, the capacity plans in those areas are immature pondering. Looking into the expansion by OEMs in Gujarat, Lumax has plans to expand accordingly with an investment already made in Sanand. New investments will tap on successful commissioning and utilisation of the existing facility.
Last fiscal was positive for Lumax in terms of growth in technology and number of orders. The orders were successfully processed and executed with new technologies. Commenting on the exports Sehgal said, “We are already exporting to customers like Trucklite Europe, JLR, Audi and John Deere. We have plans to aggressively look at entering into new customers and new geographies. Also we are planning to double our top line by 2020, nevertheless it depends on economy and OEM growth concluded Sehgal.
