Philips to invest Rs 300 crore in India manufacturing, R&D

Philips, Dutch healthtech and consumer electronics company, plans to invest Rs 250-300 crore (US$ 35.47-42.56 million) to boost its manufacturing and R&D facilities in India. It also aims to hire 1,000 people over the next two to three years, adding to its existing workforce of over 6,000 people.

“Even as we work through the current crisis, we are focused on the future and are investing towards it,” said Mr Daniel Mazon, vice chairman and managing director for Indian subcontinent at Philips India.

He added that the company will expand its factory near Pune by 7,200 sq ft to start manufacturing magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and x-ray equipment. Philips is also building a new 650,000 sq ft campus in Bengaluru that can house over 5,000 people and will be ready by 2023.

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the company witnessed an increase in demand for its connected care solutions. Thus, it plans to work towards more public-private-partnerships (PPP) in this space.

“We currently have about 100 PPPs in India in radiology and cardiology and would like to add more in connected care,” said Mr Mazon. The target is to ramp this up to 200 such partnerships over the next year or so. “We will combine IT and hardware to create a very strong solution in connected healthcare,” added Mr Mazon, that this also ties in with the ‘Make in India’ initiative.

In order to provide better healthcare solutions, the company plans to offer connected care solutions by combining hardware like monitors and ventilators to patient monitoring and access systems. This will also benefit hospitals in smaller towns connect to a speciality hospital in a larger city. The company is in talks with various state governments to start implementation of this, especially as healthcare will start shifting to a more remote model as a result of this pandemic.

Philips has been using its Healthcare Innovation Centre in Pune as a hub to export to several countries across the world, and Mr Mazon said the company will look at exporting the new product lines out of India as well. The HIC focuses on end-to-end product development and manufacturing for key product lines like ultrasound machines and mobile surgery units.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.