‘LED Lights Can Save Half Of Energy Consumption'

The demand for LED bulbs has increased significantly. How does the company see the growth of energy efficient lighting market in India?
We have seen a massive shift in market towards LED lighting in the last two years. In the consumer segment, about 30 per cent of the lights sold today are LED bulbs. Government initiatives like Ujala Scheme and Smart Cities Mission have further boosted it by making LED bulbs affordable by mass production and second making people aware of the need for energy efficient lighting. It has boosted the lighting Industry in a big way. With the smart cities mission, we expect the trend to gain further momentum. Just by switching to LED bulbs alone can save half of the energy consumption in the cities.
Lighting alone accounts for 18 per cent of electricity consumption in India. Just switching to LED bulbs will reduce it to 9 per cent. Further with smart metering, connected lighting and smart designing, we will be able to save more energy and can bring down the consumption to 7 per cent.

How has the company performed in the last two years?
Honestly, it is very productive period for us in terms of growth. The government schemes like smart cities and LED street lighting programme have contributed significantly to our business. There is an awareness among the people to use energy-efficient bulbs. We are selling about one crore LED bulbs every month and replacing one million street lights for various municipal bodies. We have witnessed high double-digit growth in terms of sales.

Other players in the market are saying that the price of Philips LED bulbs for bidding is unrealistic. How did Philips manage to quote such a low price?
It is purely the economics of scale. When we are using the manufacturing capacity to the fullest and atlarge scale, the cost automatically comes down. However, in the future we may witness some reversal trends. Globally, the cost of components like LED chips used in the bulbs are going up so it cannot come down further. So we may see prices going up slightly.

How does the company see the growth trend in the next few years?
In last two years, the government has emerged as a big buyer constituting about 33 per cent of our business.We expect the robust demand in the future especially with so many smart cities coming up. At present we are working with many municipal bodies to design the street lighting. We are also providing lightings for the government buildings and institutions.
In Pune, Naya Raipur, Hyderabad and Vizag, we are directly working with municipal bodies. In Naya Raipur, we have designed the lighting infrastructure even before the concept of smart cities came to India. We have partnered with the state government of Tamil Nadu to replace the street lights with LED lights. In other cities, we are working along with EESL, where we are supplying bulbs to EESL. 
We are a major player in architectural lighting. Many cities and states are approaching us to light various heritage buildings and monuments. We have done lighting for the Gateway of India and Victoria Memorial Building. We are also doing lighting for NDMC building in New Delhi. The architectural lighting is a highly specialized area and it requires totally different kind of lighting according to the monument or the structure. We have a specialized team of experts for architectural lighting.
Another area where we are witnessing good demand is integrated lighting solutions. The lighting customers are increasingly looking to buy an integrated solution– the entire package including light source, luminaire, controls, software and services. This is spawning a new category: lighting as a service. The upside for customers is guaranteed and improved lighting performance and for us at Philips, these services offer a powerful way to differentiate our offerings while generating ongoing revenue streams.

How technology has changed the way cities are lighted in India?
There is a gradual shift towards the connected lighting. In Pune, we are directly planning and executing the lighting project, which will be completed in 6 months. In January, we will inaugurate the control room. Another example is of Naya Raipur, which has probably the world’s most modern connected lighting infrastructure that is monitored by the engineers from their control room. 
Lighting infrastructure requires advance planning and design, which is based on the need of specific city. In Europe we have used lighting sensors where lights remain dim when there is no one in the street and the light intensity goes up when movement of people or vehicle is detected. This can be manually adjusted. 
The potential savings from connected lighting–where intelligent LEDs, embedded with sensors and connected wirelessly, can be managed remotely via the Internet–can reach 80 per cent which will be a big leap.