Ramesh Khosla

With the PC market on the downturn already, this year has been a dampener for the UPS business too. But unrelenting UPS companies are now devising strategies to cushion the effects of negative market conditions. Delhi-based Guard Electronics System, manufacturers of the Nexus brand of UPS is one such company re-designing its growth map to survive in tough conditions. The Rs 11 crore company is now planning a shift in its product and market focus.

According to Ramesh Khosla, managing director, Guard Electronics System, this will include focusing more on high-end lines as far as products are concerned and foraying into ‘B’ and ‘C’ class cities as far as strengthening market presence is concerned. Guard will be launching two high-end UPS product lines over the next six months to mark its high-end focus. In addition, the company will also be upping the ante on production, increasing its production capacity from 40,000 units per annum to 50,000 units per annum at its Delhi-based production unit. The company is targeting Rs 13 crore in revenues for the next year, with an expected growth of about 20-25 percent.

The company’s R&D team is in the process of developing a 5 KVA UPS system. Khosla believes that this is the first time a UPS system of such capacity will be launched in the Indian market. The product, to be launched by October this year, will be part of the line interactive offline range of UPS. Guard’s 5 KVA product will be targeted at market segments ranging from SME to corporates. The second new offering, on the other hand, is being targeted at the industrial segment. The product, which is a three phase input and output UPS, is currently in the designing stage and is expected to be out in the market in the next six months. The three phase input and output feature enables the product to take care of heavy application-intensive industrial environments. “There is lot of competition in the 500 VA offline UPS segment and the market at this end is getting increasingly stagnant. So it makes sense to move our focus to markets with less competition to give us an edge,” said Khosla explaining the company’s increasing focus on high-end product segments.

The company is emphasising on its R&D activities to create a niche position for itself in the Indian UPS market. Guard had recently introduced a new technology for online UPS systems called Insolated Gate Bipolar Transistor (IGBT). The technology reduces the size of the systems by about 40 percent, lowers the humming sound and increases overall efficiency.

On the market front, the company is readying itself to leverage potential opportunities arising in the ‘B’ and ‘C’ class cities. It had been focusing its market activities on the large ‘A’ class cities. Since PC penetration is growing in the smaller towns and cities, Guard Electronics will be strengthening its presence in these cities. For this, the company plans to expand its channel base primarily and enhance brand building exercises in these particular cities.