Numeric, a market leader in the field of single-phase and line-interactive UPS, became part of the Legrand Group in 2012. In this exclusive exchange, we have Palash Nandy, giving insights on how Legrand’s UPS business has grown after the induction of Numeric, and how the UPS business itself completes the wide range of offerings that Legrand has in the low-voltage power distribution space.
It has been around five years since Legrand acquired the UPS business of erstwhile Numeric Power Systems Ltd. How has Legrand’s UPS business grown over these years, in terms of product portfolio, market penetration, etc?
Numeric, one of the top three UPS manufacturer in India, was established in 1984. The first UPS from Numeric was introduced in 1985. Since then it has evolved as the undisputed leader in single-phase UPS and line-interactive UPS over the last 24 years.
In 2012, Numeric joined the Legrand Group and today, Numeric has a complete solution in UPS across line interactive, online single phase, three-phase and the latest generation modular UPS. This enables us to cater to any application from 600 VA to 4.8 MVA. Numeric products are extremely user friendly, very easy to maintain and technologically advanced.
Over the years, Numeric has also built the widest and largest service network in India. Today, this service network has 254 service centers located across India. Close to 1,200 people are dedicated in the service operations, of which, close to 900 are field technicians. As a result, our customers are able to get proper and timely service irrespective of their business location.
Being a part of the Legrand group, Numeric gets access to the best in class technology worldwide and our experience in the market provides us fantastic market knowledge. We now proudly mention ourselves as a GLOCAL company — global expertise and local knowledge.
Growth of Numeric is powered by innovation, design and user-friendliness in our products, which are the very cornerstones of our brand philosophy.
How does the Numeric UPS business complement Legrand’s various existing lines of business in the last-mile power distribution space?
Today, Legrand is the fourth biggest UPS company in the world and has nine specialist brands across the world – Legrand, Bticino, Numeric, Inform, Borri, SMS, S2S, Primetech and Fluxpower.
Numeric’s UPS business allowed Legrand to establish a strong presence in the Indian UPS market. Numeric, today is one of the top three UPS brands in India by revenue. Numeric UPS brought with it a portfolio of quality products, strong brand awareness, and an extensive sales and service network that covered the entire length and breadth of the country. Also UPS as a business line offered an excellent fit with energy-distribution and energy-efficiency solutions, two of the group’s main growth areas. Numeric also complemented Legrand’s position in switchgear, control gear, wiring devices, building management systems and digital infrastructure products.
The two brands, Legrand & Numeric, now leverage each other’s distribution channels and customers and thus both gain access to new markets and create additional business synergies.
Numeric UPS has recently launched KEOR HP / HPE, in the three-phase UPS range. Which business segments are you expecting to cater to largely?
Keor HP and Keor HPE by Numeric are designed with advanced technologies and latest generation components. These intend to satisfy both user and installers by providing ease of maintenance and safety; capital preservation and reducing operating expenses. It has a 3-level IGBT inverter design that helps to improve the inverter efficiency and overall efficiency thus reducing the operational expenses. High input power factor and low THDi reduces the cost of electrical infrastructure. Multi DSP controller in the products helps the UPS to respond faster. The uniqueness of the UPS’s lies in its flexibility to offer with or without an inbuilt transformer thereby giving full flexibility to the customer to design his solutions. Thereby, making it suitable for both IT, commercial and industrial applications.
These UPS features top and bottom cable entry, full front service access and back to the wall installation making it one of the easiest UPSes in its class to deploy, install and maintain. Intended for use in installations like datacenters, IT/ITES, healthcare, hotels, education and industrial facilities, the Keor HP and Keor HPE can offer solutions between 60 kVA to 4.8 MVA requirements, making it ideally suitable and scalable for the power requirements of such facilities.
Energy storage solutions, connected with solar power plants, are emerging as an important area. How do you intend to tap this market?
We already have products that are compatible with renewable energy sources like solar and wind. As part of the Legrand group, we are closely watching and contributing to the discussions and developments that are happening in this space and would be ready with required products as and when the demand for the same would arise.
A UPS is not seen just as a means of uninterruptible power supply but also as a source of quality power. How do you incorporate this functionality in your products?
UPS by definition is a solution for ensuring continuity of supply and for ensuring quality of power. An uninterruptible power supply using true online double conversion technology provides the highest level of power protection available. AC output regenerated from DC is completely free from any mains-disturbances such as spikes and voltage variations.
In our KEOR Series, the output voltage and frequency is controlled precisely with the help of multiple digital signal processor (DSP) controllers thus ensuring a clean and stable sine wave power at the output and reliability and highly responsive while handling, dynamic load condition, overload, short circuit and other critical load requirements with total harmonic distortion (THDv) is less than 1 per cent.
Green conversion technology – with a three level inverter design, improves inverter and overall efficiency up to 96 per cent, best in class efficiency. Built-in Isolation transformer in KEOR HP, provides complete galvanic isolation between DC & AC and also isolates neutral disturbances from source.
How do you view the demand for modular UPS solutions in the backdrop of the “Digital India” mission?
Numeric’s Modular UPS with Granular Parallel Architecture helps the customer to have more redundancy on the installed capacity. It helps the customer to plan the capacity of the UPS as per their current requirement & gives them the flexibility to increase the rating of UPS as per their business growth real time.
Independent phase configuration gives customers the flexibility to plan the load on each phase by using the modules for its specific phases while Independent phase management – helps the customer to plan the type of load connected to each phase for its redundancy and management.
Within the overall Digital India mission and the Smart Cities initiative there would be many applications like data centers, critical control rooms, etc. wherein Modular UPS would be the perfect solution.
Please discuss how Numeric UPS keeps a low carbon footprint during the manufacture and even regular operations of its products.
We at Numeric devote a lot of our energy and resources to minimize our carbon footprint. This starts from choosing the right components while designing our products, choosing the right place of manufacturing, the manufacturing processes, logistic means etc.
Numeric products are the best in class in terms of energy efficiency. Additionally, our products have a very low THDi and thereby reduces the pollution in the system in terms of harmonics. The latest generation Keor series of UPS have energy efficiency up to 96 per cent and THDi (Total Harmonic Distortion Current) less than 3 per cent.
We see a number of unorganized players in the low-rating UPS segment (homes, small offices, etc). How do you view the situation?
Yes, there are a lot of unorganized player in this particular segment and this leads to severe price competition but we, at Numeric, are constantly engaged in maximizing value for our customers. We do not believe in only price competition. We are working hard to provide the best price versus value proposition to our customers. We are also devoting our energy in providing our customers the best service (both pre sales and post sales).
We also believe that the success of a brand depends on customization, after sales service and depth of the product line. We have always been very sensitive to the needs of the customers and have designed products keeping in mind the future requirements, thus creating solutions that are simpler and robust. We have been able to create differentiation for us in the industry, which is reflected in our customers trust on us.
In the medium and long term we believe GST is a very good initiative in terms of making the country a common market and making it easier for products to move across states. It would also increase compliance with respect to taxes and therefore significantly reduce, if not eliminate, wrong/unethical practices. This can only be very good news for professional manufacturers like Numeric.
How is the government curbing unorganized sector players?
In the past there was lack of standardization. However, since March 2016, Bureau of Indian Standards made it mandatory for all UPS models, up to 5 kVA, that are sold in India to be registered with BIS. Recently, in continuation of the process BIS has started surveillance activities to ensure its implementation. This would result in better adherence to product standards and customers will be assured of the right products.
GST implementation would also ensure that the incorrect commercial practices of some of the unorganized players are discontinued. As a consequence of the BIS initiative and GST, we believe the market will get more organized and efficient. Subsequently, the customer will be benefited by getting the right quality of products.
Has China made any impact on the UPS industry in terms of imports into India?
China has over the years become a major manufacturing center, especially for lower rating UPS. In India too, a lot of lower rating UPS are imported from China. As long as these UPS are of good quality and satisfies the BIS standards, there are no problems. The challenge is when the imports are cheap and without adherence to standards. This creates price competition, unfair trade practices and finally the customer is affected by getting low quality products.
Could you brief us on the overall impact that GST has had on the UPS industry?
GST should be a great help in making the market better in terms of compliance. This should help all organized and professional manufactures like Numeric.
We at Numeric have been working on this issue for a long time now; both in terms of getting our ERP systems ready for GST and as well as playing a leading role in educating our entire value chain about the impact and changes it would entail in their business operations.
We expected some ‘turbulence’ in the market during one-two months post GST implementation. This is a new structure and the market will take some time to be ‘in tune’ with it. Some challenges with respect to registration, rules, credit for existing stocks, pricing, etc. remain. It would take some effort by all stakeholders to overcome these initial hiccups. There has been a short-term impact in July and August in terms of sales revenue for the UPS Industry but we believe that it would get back to normal in the coming months.
However, in the medium and long term we believe it is a very good initiative in terms of making the country a common market and making it easier for products to move across states. It would also increase compliance with respect to taxes and therefore significantly reduce, if not eliminate, wrong/unethical practices. This can only be very good news for professional manufacturers like Numeric.
How do you see the growth of Numeric UPS in the coming years? What would you regard as the principal growth drivers?
Numeric is one of the three biggest UPS manufacturers in India. In fact, we have been rated as number one in line-interactive and single-phase UPS in India for the past 24 years by Soft Disk. In the last two years we have also become one of the biggest players in online three-phase and modular UPS.
We plan to continuously design new products and engage with all stakeholders of the UPS market like specifiers, IT heads, system integrators, installers, facility managers, end users etc. Our growth is driven by innovation, design and user-friendliness in our products, which are the keystones of our brand philosophy. We believe in driving growth through solving customer’s problems and thereby gaining customer-confidence and market share through these parameters at each step.
Numeric’s biggest strength has been its ability to always be at the cutting edge of UPS technology. This ability was further strengthened when Numeric became a part of the Legrand group, which gave us access to the global expertise of Legrand combined with our local knowledge of customers and applications.
We are quite bullish of the growth opportunities in India. There is lot of emphasis on infrastructure, healthcare, modern retail, commercial spaces, digitalization, distance education, emergence of tech in all facets of business and personal life. This means a lot of data getting generated and therefore, strong growth in the data centres market. In addition, the constant evolution of technology in the field of UPS offers clear opportunities and we are well positioned to take advantage of these opportunities.
