Thailand based Delta Electronics forayed into the Indian market in 2003 and has since emerged as a leading power and energy management company. Its India strategy has played out well as the company has been able to leverage several opportunities in the areas of energy management, IT infrastructure and renewable energy. The telecom sector, particularly, has been a key focus area for Delta, with the company being a partner to most of the telecom operators and tower infrastructure providers in the country. “Since its inception, the company has supplied more than a million products and solutions at telecom sites,” says Rajesh Kaushal, business head, telecom power solutions. “Our offerings have helped many customers in saving energy costs, improving automation and lowering opex costs for an improved total cost of ownership. We take a lot of pride in having secured a high market share in powering critical installations such as core networks (switch sites) and data centres of telecom operators. These critical installations expect very high reliability and energy efficiency.”

Company background and key offerings

Delta operates in three business categories – power electronics, automation and infrastructure. It offers telecom power solutions, renewable energy solutions (solar inverters), display solutions, industrial automation solutions, UPS and data centre solutions, EV charging solutions, rail transportation solutions, en­ergy sto­rage solutions (lithium-ion battery), DC fans and blowers, etc.

The company has 12 regional offices, three manufacturing facilities (in Rudrapur, Gurugram and Hosur) and two re­search and development (R&D) centres (in Gurugram and Bengaluru), as well as 200 channel partners and a team of approximately 500 service engineers serving clients on a pan-Indian basis.

For the telecom sector, it offers energy efficient power solutions, storage systems such as lithium-ion batteries, hybrid cooling applications, smart controls and remote monitoring applications. Mean­while, on the renewable energy front, the company’s solar division recently crossed the 1 GW mark in solar inverter installations in India, while its wind power converter division recorded a sizeable order book. Further, its industrial automation team offers solar water pumping solutions for rural markets. The company’s energy storage division is working on lithium-ion battery solutions for renewable energy applications. It is also ready with a bi-directional MW-scale power conversion system for renewable applications.

Besides India, the com­pany exports to se­veral nei­gh­bouring countries including Ne­­­pal, Bangla­desh, Bhu­­tan and Sri Lanka.

The telecom opportunity

Faster adoption of 4G, fixed wireless broadband and newer applications such as voice over internet protocol, over-the-top apps, cloud computing and audio/video ­streaming services have led to exponential growth in India’s data consumption. This has opened up several opportunities for Delta as IT and telecom infrastructure needs to be expanded in accordance with the surging data uptake. Power conversion, storage, cooling and overall energy management are primary areas where Delta ex­pects to grow significantly. The company has now expanded its product offerings to building management system and surveillance solutions, in addition to data centre solutions (UPS with lithium-ion battery), con­tainerised data centre solutions and display solutions for network operations centres.

Going forward

Given the immense opportunities that India presents, Delta plans to spend $500 million in the Indian market over the next 10 years. Of this, $200 million-$250 million will be invested in the next two to three years itself. This investment will mainly be for the new manufacturing factory being set up in Krishnagiri as part of the government’s Make in India and Digital India initiatives. A large part of the investment will also be made for the innovation and R&D centre being built in Bengaluru. “Currently, we have around 350 R&D engineers and we aim to increase this tally to around 2,000 by 2020,” says Kaushal

“In the past 15 years or so, Delta has achieved sustained growth in all its businesses in India. Notably, we have achieved a leadership position  in telecom power solutions, renewable energy solutions (solar inverters) and display solutions. We expect to achieve a similar position in the rest of our business divisions in the years to come.”

Rajesh Kaushal, Business Head, Telecom Power Solutions, Delta Electronics India

Based on company inputs