HARTING India expects to grow by 30%

March 14, 2013 10:07 am

HARTING India expects to grow by 30%
“We had almost 200-300 per cent growth in first 4-5 years. Now we are close to about 30 per cent year-on-year growth,” said Girish Rao, CEO, HARTING India Pvt. Ltd.
HARTING is a globally recognised company and you have started your venture in India in 2005. How has been the journey?The journey in India has been good so far because we have a lot of customers in India looking for high-quality products. There was a tremendous growth in the last 6-7 years for HARTING India. We started from scratch in India, and today it is a decent size company with almost 35 people working for us.
We had almost 200-300 per cent growth in first 4-5 years of our operation here, now we are close to about 30 per cent year-on-year (YOY) growth.
What are your expectations for this financial year? In this financial year, we expect to grow by 30 per cent.
How do you find the acceptance of your products when it comes to Indian market? HARTING products are considered as premium products which are on everybody’s wish list because of their unmatched quality.
So affordability remains a question when you talk about HARTING products? Actually it’s a myth people have about our products. We are not very expensive. If people are willing to give us a chance to look into their applications, we can come out with cost-effective solution for their applications, and that’s how we are trying to work. People find our products expensive when they compare us with our look-a-like products without going through finer technical aspects. Our connectors are the benchmark in our market and 90 per cent of the competitors have copied our products. Obviously, when they don’t have technical leadership, they try to compete with low price.
Isn’t difficult offering premium products and competing with them who are offering lower cost? How do you tackle this kind of situation? We are also little bit choosy about the work and do not approach each and every market segment. We work in those markets where people are looking for robust products used in harsh industrial environment. For mission critical applications, reliability and minimal downtime are the key selection criterion, and our customers are willing to pay higher prices for such high-end applications.
Could you explain the initiative taken to strengthen your position and expand your base in domestic market? Most of our customers still think HARTING as a connector company. The HARTING Technology Group is skilled in electrical, electronic and optical connection, transmission and networking, as well as in manufacturing, mechatronics and software creation. The group uses these skills to develop customised solutions and products such as connectors for energy and data transmission applications including mechanical engineering, rail technology, wind energy plants, factory automation, and the telecommunications sector.
HARTING is also a specialist in industrial applications in the form of enclosures, housings, cabling and/or the assembly of individual or complete systems. We are trying to educate customers on various solution packages that we can offer. In India, we have started small operation where we do some value-added activities. In coming years, we plan to have our own manufacturing and would like to do everything under one roof—whether it is connector manufacturing, cable assemblies, or complex solutions.

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