Dialogue-Deepak Singh Thakur

What is the addressable market size for power electronics in India?

The addressable market for our business in India is estimated at USD 700 million in 2018, which includes UPS and cooling, racks and datacenter solutions. We cater to approximately 60–70 percent of this market in various segments, primarily in branded business market. We have the largest portfolio of UPS solutions from 600VA to over 12MW ratings, all types of topologies, 6Pulse, 12Pulse, IGBT rectifier, monolithic, modular construction or fully hot-swappable modular UPS suitable for various segments. We have aggressive plans in expanding our solutions portfolio with upcoming launch of Edge datacenter solutions like iCool Racks, iCool Row and also, high density precision air-conditioning solutions for India market.

What are the major factors influencing the growth of the market?

Globally five mega trends may be listed as strong influencers to market growth.

Firstly, there is a shift of global economic power from the existing developed, to the developing or E7 countries and India is one of them. It is anticipated that India may overtake the US market in terms of economic growth by 2050 to go into second place. We expect to be number two, after China. Large MNCs are investing in India. Some even prefer India over China as we have better relationships in terms of trade.

The second one is the demographic and geographic shift leading to advantage India in coming years. By 2021 India’s population is likely to exceed that of China. India will account for 20 percent of the global working population by 2025. Also, India’s majority population is the younger generation. It is the younger generation, who is technology savvy, and the potential customers with higher purchasing power. This is a key driver for the rapid growth of Indian market.

Thirdly, demand for power consumption is projected to increase 2.5 times by 2025. This means huge investment in establishing new renewable power generation plants and massive drive for energy efficiencies to cater to this demand. Delta is pioneer in energy efficiency solutions and will be a key player to contribute to India’s demand for efficient power management.

Forth, rapid urbanization is another mega trend, which India is also seeing. In India, around 920 million people are expected to stay in cities by 2025, and many of the cities are being planned as smart cities. Urbanization brings with it issues such as pollution management, transport infrastructure shortages, demand for integrated solutions as security and critical passive power infrastructures. We have a huge role to play in providing critical power and cooling solutions to support these smart cities infrastructures.

The fifth mega trend is the rapid technology shift that is taking place globally. And India particularly is able to leapfrog in most cases, due to the huge potential it carries. After the rapid smartphone proliferation, businesses are fast adopting newer technologies like AI, VR, drones, self-driving cars, smart homes, smart factory, and Internet of Things. The technology shift is moving toward smarter mobility and digitization of businesses. More and more data are being generated which is putting a lot of pressure on the infrastructure, and datacenters. As businesses adopt newer technologies they need to fast change their physical infrastructure meeting the critical power and cooling solutions requirements.  Delta Electronics is fully geared up with its critical power and cooling solutions to make sure that we help our customers create new or retrofit existing infrastructures more robust, reliable, flexible, available, and energy efficient.

The above trends are leading to the growth of Edge and Cloud Datacenters. Add to that the recent government regulation that the user data has to be localized in India, which has pushed growth of datacenters in India. Further the digitization of economy is leading to an increased demand for edge computing, which is also projected to a 30 percent CAGR over the next 5years. And that is the market we are strategizing to tap with innovative solutions which can help our customers fast adapt to the business continuity need. Though India has its economic challenges, but with these economic challenges are also an opportunity for us to provide solutions.

The challenge lies in the pace of implementation and the huge amount of power to feed the systems. Companies like ours have to ensure that we offer sustainable strategies to our customers, with newer technologies. The infra must take less space, thereby making space for other IT setups. R&D is an important aspect here, and our core strength lies in designing innovative solutions which are smarter, greener, and designed together with our customer challenges in mind.

Companies are capturing share with an upgraded and diversified product range. Moving forward, please elaborate on your marketing strategy.

Every opportunity is an opportunity but every challenge is a much bigger opportunity. While going about our usual business, we also continuously study the challenges in the market while developing a new product.

The very fact that we have launched a highly scalable hot-swappable modular UPS system – one of the world’s most compact – it manages to squeeze 500kVA in a single 42U rack space, is a testimony to our research capabilities. The Modulon DPH series was designed for datacenters that run high-density servers, or highly populated facilities where space comes at a considerable premium. Every 50kW module is fully redundant and hot-swappable, and the system as a whole delivers AC-AC efficiency of more than 96.5 percent, helping save space and cut down on OpEx at the same time.

We are working on edge computing technologies where the challenge is faster deployment, specifically in the banking segment, manufacturing segment, and defense segment. We are creating standardized building blocks for that and can be custom designed for customer requirements, include self-contained edge datacenters like iCool Rack, iCool Row, and Micro Datacenters. Our containerized datacenter solutions have become the best choice for edge computing and disaster-recovery datacenters. With flexibility, agility, rapid deployment, high integration, and excellent energy efficiency, they beat competitors to win the client’s trust for the project.

The solution offers a modular design that fully integrates high-efficiency power supply, precision cooling, comprehensive monitoring, and airflow management, wiring, and piping systems in one 20- or 40-feet container. This not only cuts down datacenter construction costs but also shortens the construction time span effectively, which in turn, enables quick and flexible system deployment. Instead of the two-year construction time required by traditional datacenters, our containerized datacenters only take a few months to be operational. The fully prefabricated, pre-tested, and complete configurations of Delta’s containerized datacenter solutions, satisfy the highly demanding needs of mobile edge computing needs. In terms of energy consumption, they offer high energy efficiency as subsystems, including UPS, power distribution, batteries, cooling, and highly integrated racks.

Our recently launched power container solutions are finding success with colocation service providers. They help create the edge network for the client’s edge computing applications. They offer unique flexibility and scalability to match customers’ business growth by integrating different power configurations, energy-saving cooling, smart monitoring and control, and other critical elements in one single platform. They can also be deployed outside the building rather than inside and very fast deployment can be done.

Over the past 3 years, we have also been actively working in the lithium-ion battery storage space. It is an excellent energy source with a long service life for 48V applications as telecom and datacenters for power backup. It is a compact package of high energy density. With similar energy storage capacity, they weigh about three times less than lead-acid batteries, which helps reduce the total mass of the system by about 60-80 percent. Such batteries require less time for charging and feature a better self-discharge rate, which plays a major role in the event of frequent outages.

We are the only company that has the technology advantage, which we bring to the customer. For instance, we co-work with the R&D wing of a global search-engine company, for the latest technologies in terms of whether it is open computing solutions or innovative cooling solutions, which cut down the cooling operating expenses. We co-create solutions with our customers and our R&D team works with them.

We have expanded our operations, from being OEM/ODM to marketing our products under our own brand name too. Our brand acceptance is pretty high now and so is our brand recall. We regularly hold promotional events for our distributor channels.

We cater solutions to almost all segments and applications. A detailed marketing strategy is charted out every year. Innovative and newer targets are set, digital inclusion and geographical expansion being two major ones over the last couple of years.

Please comment on Delta’s edge over its competitors.

We pride ourselves in being an R&D driven organization, which is the foundation of our company. Innovation is the focus of our R&D and Delta Electronics has over 64 state-of-the-art R&D centers globally, including one located in Bangalore, India.

Besides working on core product area and applications, we are working on complete solutions for smart-grid applications and automotive applications. On our core product area and applications, we are constantly enhancing the efficiency rate of the power converters and infrastructure monitoring solutions for telecom sites. We offer highly customized products and R&D facilities in India working on indigenization of UPS and data center solutions suited to the Indian and SAARC region requirements and environment. Developing a customized outdoor power supply for critical equipment’s is another core area of Delta India’s R&D activity. Our punchline Smarter, Greener, Together says it all about our commitment to provide innovative, clean, energy-efficient solutions for a better tomorrow.

We plan to invest heavily in the next 10 years in India. In the short run, over the next couple of years, we would be spending in making India our global manufacturing and R&D hub. This investment will mainly be in two areas, the new factory in Krishnagiri and the large innovation and R&D center we are building in Bangalore. Currently, we have around 350 R&D engineers and we have a target of increasing this tally to 2000 engineers by 2020.

Devoted to its mission statement, to provide innovative, clean and energy-efficient solutions for a better tomorrow, by means of continuous innovation, and development of high value-added products, Delta spares no effort in creating benefits for its employees, shareholders, and society as a whole. Delta’s CSR committee ensures that the benefits created are shared with its customers.

The technology acceptance in terms of working on new solutions and new applications, with continuous engagement with the customer is our forte. Also, realizing business goals and vision with increased competitiveness is our strength. Our UPS systems are not mere standard boxes but highly engineered solutions for business continuity of our customers. Our lean setup, with fast-decision making abilities and customer friendly policies, with an extremely agile and vast service network enables us to continue to be the best in this industry. We strive to be the best choice for being the chosen technology solution partners to all the businesses we engage with. We look forward to understand their business challenges and work together for the best critical power and cooling solutions.