Neha Alawadhi Moneycontrol News
Barco, which makes LCD panels and deals in visualisation technology, has ambitious plans for the Indian market. In conversation with Moneycontrol, Rajiv Bhalla, Managing Director, Barco India, spoke about focus areas in the country and its newest product - UniSee.
Edited excerpts:
Q: How important is India for Barco globally? A: India is one of the top markets for the brand globally and is the second biggest market, in terms of business functions, after Belgium. From a team of 50 in 1996, today we are over 500 people in India, and this underlines the importance of the India market. Barco India has a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility at Noida – one of the largest manufacturing facilities outside of Belgium- and a growing software development centre.
We have seen double digit growth in India in the last two years, and with increased focus on Make in India for India and beyond, we are confident of sustaining this growth. Another testament to the importance of the Indian market for us is the fact that the large video walls that Barco supplies in 90 countries are made in India.
Going ahead, we will continue to invest in R&D here and leverage our local manufacturing capabilities.
Q: What are the focus areas in India? A: Our focus is on three core markets: entertainment, enterprise and healthcare. Additionally, across our target sectors, there are huge opportunities. For example, India currently has only eight cinema screens per million people. With the growing popularity of movies as well as a remarkable rise in the viewership of sports like cricket, football and badminton, the country has been witnessing a growing demand for high-quality digital entertainment solutions.
Barco has a wide range of products for the cinema and events industry, and with our continuous innovation across our product lines, we believe we can
play a central role in this industry.
Q: Tell us a bit about UniSee and its features.
A: Barco UniSee is our flagship product for the LCD video wall market. We have completely redesigned and optimized every component of the LCD video wall, enabling a seamless viewing experience for our customers.
Another key highlight for the product is the mounting technology.
All existing video wall products in the industry today see multiple product breakage while mounting and dismantling the product. With our completely redefined the mounting and dismantling process, there is significantly less breakage, which is a huge breakthrough in the industry.
Barco has already been playing an integral role in smart cities, control rooms and our new product is a great fit for these sectors. This product can go into multiple sectors like – experience centers in malls or corporate lobbies, corporate meeting rooms, broadcast backdrops and command and control centres.
Q: What are some of your business plans in the next 2-3 years?
A: Over the next few years, we are poised to become the biggest enablers of smart city solutions in the country. Especially, with the launch of Barco Unisee, we will be focusing on expanding our leadership for control room solutions for smart cities; therefore, focusing on technologies that
operate at the intersection of utilities, processes, administration, and the end-user. We will also continue to bring innovative products and solutions across our key focus areas – enterprise, entertainment and healthcare and you will see a lot of industry first innovations from us.
Moving forward, one of our biggest focus areas will be to develop products and solutions specifically for our customers in India. We have a strong R&D and manufacturing capability locally and this will further help us innovate for the India market.
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