R&M is one of the significant players in the structured cabling market. In an interaction with CRN’s Rachana Jha, Gaurav Ahluwalia, Managing Director, R&M, India, discussed the company’s expansion plans for India and how they are differently positioned in the market.
The structured cabling market has managed to register a booming growth rate. In the coming years also, this market is expected to witness marked growth. Upcoming technologies like 5G in India, will boost this growth and bring a lot of opportunities for players working in this field, R&M being one of them. R&M implements cabling solutions for a large array of requirements. As per Gaurav Ahluwalia, Managing Director, R&M, India, Swiss standard quality products are their key differentiator. “The three main components of structured cabling i.e. cable, information outlet, and patch cord are built with Swiss innovation, durability with future-go strategy, which adds to the performance of the cabling,” says Ahluwalia. Besides, product pricing also differentiates them in the market.
Expansion plans for India
For expansion in India, R&M is hiring a National Sales Director in the month of November and more staff focusing on the channel business. “Going forward we are adding more national distributors,” he adds. Currently, they have 11 resellers. By next year, they are planning to increase the number to 30. According to Ahluwalia, this will enable them to gain more visibility in untapped regions of the Indian market. In the next two years, they can witness even the channel contributing to global statistics of R&M.
Roadmap and investment strategy
The company has opened a production facility in Bengaluru, and will be increasing the headcount in this unit. “Currently, the plant is running on 400,000 man hours. We will be increasing the headcount as well as investing in purchasing more equipment, which can increase the capacity to clock 750,000 man hours,” explains Ahluwalia. He also adds, “The Bengaluru production plant currently has five lines. We aim to increase it to eight lines. In fact, we have invested in purchasing a new place to deploy the new equipment, so that we can get more space to add new product lines in this particular plant.” The company will focus on telcos and enterprises in 2019. Among government telcos, BSNL will be the focus for 5G implementation.
Growth path
“After the acquisition of ATS, we expected we would be losing the manpower, due to some geographical locations of R&M office, which is far away from the city. But, the great achievement is no employee has left the company. I am proud to say, we achieved 100 per cent retention of our blue colour employees and high-level management. This states that people want to work with the company,” he says.
In the future
R&M will be closing this FY 2018 with INR 150 crores. FY 2019 target is INR 180-200 crores. And, FY 2020 target is INR 250 crores. The company will also focus on headcount, which will be increased from 220 to 300. There will be new product launches in the month of November. R&M Bengaluru plant will be focusing on India-India as well as India-global distribution of products.
