'Hitachi India is expanding its footprint '

M. A. Siraj | NT

Bengaluru: Hitachi India is the largest Japanese company in India. It manages 28 businesses, employs nearly 50,000 persons spread across 68 manufacturing sites and multiple research and development (R&D) centres.

It operates in diverse industrial sectors such as infrastructure, Railways, energy, construction machinery, healthcare, Information Technology (IT), automotive, and payment services.

Mr. Bharat Kaushal, Managing Director, Hitachi India, says the company is expanding its footprint in India inasmuch as India figures among two nations— the other being China—that have independent global centre of the company.

However, the company has such global centre on a continental level in Asia (mainly in South-east Asian countries), America and Europe.

According to him 65 per cent of the Hitachi operation are now overseas while the home country Japan accounts for 35 per cent of them. Mr. Kaushal who was in Bengaluru on a visit, told News Trail that Bengaluru and Karnataka figure prominently on Hitachi India’s map with Bengaluru being the headquarters for Hitachi Rail, Hitachi Energy, and the company’s centralized service centres for HR, finance, procurement of material.

He pointed out that Japan-India Institute for Manufacturing (JIM) has been functioning at Dharwad since 2021. It has been training personnel at its Dharwad plant under the Manufacturing Skill Transfer Promotion Program under an agreement signed between India and Japan in 2016.

“Nearly one-third of the total workforce in India has been hired in Karnataka”, he added.

Kaushal said Hitachi arrived in India in 1933 with supply of the first Hitachi locomotive. It later supplied turbines for the Bhakra Nangal dam (commissioned in 1958) which are still in operation with periodical refurbishing.

He said technology is making its foray into every sector of industry and development.

“Earlier it used to be embedded, while now it is modular”, he remarked.

He said solutions developed by Hitachi India were now providing platform for all the Kendriya Vidyalayas and Ayushman Bharat where hospital information and telemedicine network are using the platform.

The company provides the digital infrastructure to State Bank of India where it has a joint venture with the largest bank in the Public sector.

Kaushal said India’s vast potential to train people from the nations in the region lies unlocked and Hitachi India has set its eyes on this horizon.

“Technology is taking turns very swiftly and expectations of consumer are seeing generational shift. If the change makes three swift turns in the IT sector in a year, the same may take one turn in three years in the rail sector”, he added.

Mr. Manoj Kumar, Director, Hitachi Rail, who was present on the occasion, said Hitachi Rail is engaged in laying the Metro network in several cities.

It has undertaken signaling and telecom in Mumbai Monorail, end to end work in Navi Mumbai Metro, and has already commissioned 10 km line under the Hoogly river in Kolkata which is under revenue service while another 1.5 km will be added in a month.