Prakash Jethwa, General Manager, South Asia (ANZ, Asean, SAARC), Honeywell Scanning and Mobility

What does Honeywell Scanning and Mobility specialize in?

Our business is scanning and mobility. We entered the business by acquiring two different companies, Metrologic Instruments and Hand Held Products. Both are American companies and where competing with each other. Honeywell acquired them and put them in the market. Of the two, Metrologic Instruments is better known in the market. Hand Held Products was the first acquisition by Honeywell (in 2007). The products of Hand Held are aimed towards industrial use. Metrologic, at the other end, was acquired in the year 2008, and is better acknowledged. It is value based and the products are aimed at the retail end.

How big is HSM's product portfolio?

We have a wide range of scanners; across any vertical; technology and price point. One technology is laser based and the other is imaging based. We thus have both the technologies. And we have any product a customer wants. Depending on the retailer's transactions we suggest a suitable scanner or scanning solutions. We could suggest hand held scanners for small retailers, stationary stand based scanners. Beyond that are the wide window scanners, which allow the bar code to be read from a distance. We thus have products, which call for employing operators that vary from the highly skilled to the less skilled ones. Our product expertise increases with use and the speed of use. Places like hyper marts require a higher speed of reading. At places like these, bio-optic scanners come into play. Unlike RFID, our scanners have been engineered to work with 3D space. We are also trying to promote imaging based propagation scanners. The world is moving towards imaging scanner technology. Look closely at laser scanners and the beam is guided by a rotating prism. Such mechanism are prone to lose calibration is case of a fall or shock. Scanner employing imaging technology do not moving objects. They are therefore more robust.

How would you term Honeywell's presence at the South Asia level in terms of market share and product reach?

Let's consider the highly saturated market like Australia. Hand Held Products and Metrologic Instruments never looked at this market. We have a very small market share in this market. In China we are very strong. In India we are large in retail. We are lacking into manufacturing. We are working to increase our reach in manufacturing. Automotive is one, electronics is another. FMCG is another area we are looking at. We are also looking at consumer products.

Where does India rank?

Nearly 50% of our revenues come from South Asia. 25% business comes from India. Asia contributes 20% of the global business; US contributes 50%. Asia is the fastest growing. In India, we are projecting 50% per cent growth this year, and 50% next year. The market is growing at 18%. We feel that the Indian market will not slow down.

When did HSM enter India?

Honeywell Scanning and Mobility entered the Indian market in 2005. Our competitors have been there from before. We entered late. It was Metrologic Instruments, which established an office in India in the year 2005. Hand Held Products never entered India. It worked with Intellicon. Our products are made in China. The mobility products come out of US. It is the scanners that are made in China. Over a period of time we will be shifting the mobility products manufacturing to China. In India we have a development centers at Bangalore, Hyderabad and Coimbatore. The engineers at these development centers work on new technologies and solutions for all the Honeywell business divisions including Honeywell Scanning and Mobility. We thus source technology from India. A lot of core development is done in India. Take for example, a LPG gas cylinder. We developed readers for these cylinders. It was a challenging task to have a reader gather the identification number on the cylinder, which in most cases is the printed weight in kg. What makes it hard to read the number denoting the weight is the curvature of the cylinder surface.

How are HSM's Indian operations organised?

Our country manager is located in Mumbai. We have regional sales offices across the country. Our repair center is in Bangalore. We call it the Level 2 repair center. We do business through six tier 1 partners. Under them are re-sellers. Of the six Tier 1 partners, Intellicon, is our solutions partners. It also does Level 1 repairs (regionally). ADI (a Honeywell company that is into security business to a large extent) and Basawa are our distribution partners.

What is the market share in India? What is competition like?

Competition in India is the same as what we face the world over. Our competitors are well acknowledged. If there is a difference, it is in China. We have noticed the emergence of copycat competition. Honeywell fakes have started to appear. Our competitors face this problem too. In China it is called the Shanzai phenomenon. Shanzai means copying. Fortunately, the copycats are laser based. Imaging scanners have not shown up yet. They employ software, which makes it exceedingly tough to imitate.

What are the new initiatives that HSM is taking to increase its footprint in India?

In India we cannot justify manufacture at this moment in time. The numbers are not good enough. We are here and have captured a large part of the business. We see a robust growth for the next 5 to 10 years. This is when we will look at manufacturing products in India, and even export. Interestingly, Government is turning out to be a big vertical. We are looking at it as a big growth catalyst. We are looking at growth coming from pharma, auto industry and more. To increase our footprint we are going to do a series of roadshows to educate about bar coding.