R&M continues its growth strategy and commitment for the India market 

Hans Hess
Chairman - Board of Directors, R&M

R&M inaugurated its state-of-the-art production hub in a sprawling facility in Bangalore. This manufacturing facility is built under the ‘Make in India’ initiative and is dedicated to production and warehousing of Fiber Optic solutions for data centers and FTTx applications.

On having opened this facility and adding another milestone in deepening its commitment to India, Hans Hess, Chairman - Board of Directors, R&M speaks exclusively to VARINDIA on what he thinks is the India market like in the structured cabling space and about his investment and future expansion plans in this market -

What potential does India market show as far as manufacturing is concerned? What will be your R&D and manufacturing roadmap for the country? 
We have invested in manufacturing in India with the idea of serving the customers in India.  But we have now seen that Indian employees can offer high level of quality supported by us. So we are thinking of using this facility to not only produce for our Indian customers but also for our customers in Europe and United States. We are also thinking of taking up some R&D here for the purpose of not only customizing our products for the Indian market but also develop together with our suppliers great quality products for our international customers. 

What business advantages do you see in India today? How do you plan to give shape to it while also driving profitability in mind? 
We are convinced that India has a very attractive workforce here who can produce top-level, Swiss quality products for our international customers, clubbed with the knowledge of efficiency that we can bring from Europe. This will give us highly competitive products for this market as well as the international market, giving rise to a profitable business eventually. 

How do opportunities like Make in India and Digital India lend further support to your ambitions and goals for the India market? 
Make in India is an opportunity for us, because we are one of the few international players in our segment that has a sizeable operation in India. So we can proudly say to our customers in India that we deliver world-class, Swiss quality, Made in India products and this combination is unbeatable. 

What will be your future expansion and investment plans for India? 
For the time being we will scale our operations here through which we can produce at least three times more products, so this is going to be our first step. But the rate at which we see the Indian market developing currently, we might have to set up a second operation here, again for both the India and the international customers. 

What will be your further plans in expanding current production unit with more sophisticated fiber assemble units? 
Our worldwide operations for fiber optics is in Bulgaria and we have been increasingly bringing these products to India, to manufacture them for both Indian and international customers. So we will increasingly have products made in India and this Indian operation in Bangalore will be the most important and our biggest facility in the world. 

How is R&M doing worldwide in terms of driving the structured cabling market? 
R&M has been investing significantly into expanding our product offering for international customers. We are a company that is present globally in our field and we will continue to develop this international business potential in the direction of smart cities and other such initiatives which are offering a scope of growth for the structured cabling market and other products that we have.

What new technological enhancements would you be looking forward to in your products and solutions in coming days? 
R&M has plans to go beyond the structured cabling market and invest into datacenter, which is a very interesting market particularly here in India. We already have a high quality product portfolio, but recently we entered into the telecom business as we see a lot of opportunities in public networksto allow more people to use fiber optics. So we are a part of that attractive journey with leading providers of internet telecom networks in India. 

We are one of the leaders in this field and have made huge investments in highly competitive product range. We combine this with a very powerful distribution network in India and deliver this with reliability and relationship to our Indian customers.