Navigating the Dynamics & Future Prospects in the UPS Industry

In a recent interaction with Industry Outlook, Sushil shared his insights on the current UPS industry in India, emerging trends and other aspects

Sushil Virmani completed his BSc in Electrical Engineering from Punjab Engineering College. Sushil boasts of an extensive career spanning close to four decades during which he has held key leadership and managerial positions across companies such as Socomec Innovative Power Solutions, Eaton Power Quality and Siemens, before joining Best Power earlier in April this year.

Share your thoughts on the international UPS market landscape currently.

A decade ago, North America was the most dynamic and growing segment worldwide, thanks to the slowly blooming data centre industry back then. The last decade has witnessed a similar growth trajectory in the Asia region, wherein today, it is growing at a much faster rate than the US due to massive contributions from India and China in terms of investments in manufacturing, healthcare, electronics, data centre, IT and many other industries which are giving a very strong push for the UPS industry in Asia. Although Europe was a strong market for the UPS industry many years back, it today ranks third.

Tell us about a few emerging trends influencing the UPS systems market in India and their impact on the product development process.

Today, due to the high demand for digitization and the increase in transactions across finance and entertainment sectors, data centres are witnessing accelerated growth, making India the ‘global data centre capital’. As a result, every data centre company either have their business already in India or is looking to foray into our country and make investments in this space. Given the critical role UPS systems play in every data centre setup, there is great pressure today on the UPS industry to scale their manufacturing capabilities and enhance the efficiency of their products to successfully cater to the rising demand from the data centres. Additionally, the government has been making significant investments into the healthcare industry by launching numerous schemes and initiative programs such as the Ayushman Bharat resulting in setting up new colleges/hospitals in Tier 2/3/4 cities. This is forcing the Medical machinery & OEMs, and hospitals to set up their services closer to the customers, further driving the demand for UPS systems. As a result, the UPS industry is now forced to innovate and develop high-scale products that are capable of 24x7 operations to ensure consistency in the power supply for critical health systems and applications side by side

Throw some light on the government’s influence on the growth trajectory of the UPS sector lately.

Recently, the government has taken a serious stand that data from India should remain in India. This has had a serious influence on every organization that has data centre space to set up their facilities in India, which in turn demands large units of UPS systems to stay operational around the clock. Also, the massive population of the country brings with it humongous opportunities for the healthcare sector to grow to a global level. This, clubbed with the numerous government initiatives to improve the healthcare ecosystem in the country and make healthcare more accessible has been another major factor that is driving the UPS industry towards achieving accelerated growth in India today.

How can organizations adopt their strategies to meet the diverse requirements while catering to OEMs globally?

It is very heartwarming to see that global conglomerates are adopting the China Plus One strategy & setting up a manufacturing base in India. Many large manufacturing companies are coming into India lately and setting up their second base here. This has led to a huge surge in the manufacturing of goods in India to cater to the world market. Be it across automobile, healthcare, manufacturing or any other segment, companies are looking at vastly skilled manpower available in India & setting up global/local R&D facilities to develop new products for both local and global markets. The challenge lies in producing such high-standard products, which will require Indian manufacturers to invest more in R&D to innovate and develop manufacturing equipment at par with global standards.

In your opinion, how do you see the UPS industry in India going forward into 2024?

Riding on the fast DC market edge computing is gaining a lot of traction in tier-II and tier-III cities, the primary challenge for the UPS industry is to have efficient reliable product best-in-class services in those locations. Going forward, the need of the hour will be the sustainable product meeting Indian supply conditions Li-ion will be the best solution for this. As a result, Li-ion battery manufacturing in India will no doubt witness a significant upsurge, pushing the companies to set up their production plants in India as quickly as possible so that they can offer UPS with Li-ion batteries for optimum performance and efficiency.