dsm-firmenich, the Swiss-Dutch nutrition, health and beauty firm, plans to invest over $100 million (over Rs 835 crore) in India in the near term for scaling up the business to cash in on the potential of the country, its global CEO Dimitri de Vreeze said on September 25.
It will be investing mainly in capacity expansion, including a new manufacturing plant as it also looks to make India an export base for ingredients for its global operations.
The company, which was formed last year by the merger of Netherlands-based DSM with Switzerland's Firmenich — both of which are over a century old, expects India to be among its top three global markets in the next five years.
"India is a super important leg of our growth. Our business is about half a billion dollars in India…We have invested about half a billion US dollars over the last 10 years, and we have plans to expand with 100-plus million dollars in new capacity going forward for the next coming years," Vreeze told PTI here in an interview.
The investment will be on new facilities, offices, labs and innovation centres, he added.
Elaborating further, he said, "We will also invest the next two to three years into the ingredient supply. We will debottleneck and expand capacity in the existing lines, which will be in the ingredients for nutrition, health and beauty, which we use not only in India but also outside India." Vreeze further said the company is looking at new capacity through greenfield plants, which are more for the 'taste' business vertical to cater to the local requirements.
The company has seven plants in India at present in Daman, Dahej, Vadodara, Jadcherla (Telangana), Navi Mumbai and two in Kerala.
Underlining the significance of the Indian market, he said, "It is for us a place to be in to continue to grow. The last five years, we've grown double digits in a row." When asked when does the company see its India business hitting $1 billion revenue, Vreeze said, "My dream, so to speak, is to reach the 1 billion dollar mark as soon as we can." Besides the fast-growing market due to the trend of preventive healthcare, healthy food and sanitation offering huge opportunities, he said the company sees India as is important place to learn from.
Not only for the domestic market, India is also very important for the ingredients for global operations, he added.
"We produce in India ingredients which we use for our global portfolio. We have factories here, we have joint ventures here, where we make ingredients which we use outside India for customers outside India as part of the solution package." In terms of market size globally for the company, Vreeze said India is currently in the 'lower end of top-end' but "in five years it should be in top three".
Currently, the US, Europe and the Asia Pacific region are the biggest markets for dsm-firmenich.
"We feel that the Indian train is moving and is accelerating while we speak, and we want to be part of that fast-moving train," Vreeze, adding it's more difficult to jump on the train when it has already moved.
"So we want to be on that train today," he said.
The company has put an India advisory board, comprising people from different sectors including business and academia to help it chart the future course in the country, he added.
The company has at present 1,700 employees in India at present, which he said should cross the 2,000 mark in the short term considering its expansion plans.
dsm-firmenich has operations in almost 60 countries with annual revenue of more than 12 billion euros.
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