Xylem bets big on India, may make export hub here
MUMBAI: American water solutions company Xylem Inc has zeroed in on India as its fastest growing market in the next three years even as it readies the country to be an export hub by localising production, a senior executive told ET. On his visit to India last week, Patrick K. Decker, Xylem’s CEO, compared the current scenario with the India he knew in the nineties, which was full of promise but slow to fulfill it.
“Back then, whenever I would come, I could predict the front page of the newspaper. Because the opportunity was always one year away. But that has changed now. The pace has picked up. We're a water technology company… getting it right in India is critically important,” said Decker. Finding a rare similarity with US, Decker underlined the “extreme flooding” in one part of the country and “extreme scarcity” in the other. “We have the same challenges in the US, just maybe not the same scale as we face here in India,” he added.
Xylem is considering adding another factory in the country that will localise its water treatment capabilities. The company presently earns around $100 million (Rs 700 crore) from the country out of a total global revenue base of around 4.7 billion dollars. It’s currently sourcing $80 million of products out of India for other markets, registering a high double-digit growth rate since 2014. “Currently, the China-India combine represent less than 10% of our total revenue-…but in terms of growth rate, in the course of next three to five years, India is expected to be our fastest growing market,” said Decker.
Decker also said that even though its strategy of acquiring companies in the clean water and wastewater side is 90% complete, it may look at larger scale mergers and acquisitions in the industrial water management side. "There, I would say, we scan the world globally and certainly keep our eyes open in India...it's important that whoever we acquire has a capability in India, has a channel in India, or at least has a technology that we believe would be applicable to India that could be localised," Decker said.
“Back then, whenever I would come, I could predict the front page of the newspaper. Because the opportunity was always one year away. But that has changed now. The pace has picked up. We're a water technology company… getting it right in India is critically important,” said Decker. Finding a rare similarity with US, Decker underlined the “extreme flooding” in one part of the country and “extreme scarcity” in the other. “We have the same challenges in the US, just maybe not the same scale as we face here in India,” he added.
Xylem is considering adding another factory in the country that will localise its water treatment capabilities. The company presently earns around $100 million (Rs 700 crore) from the country out of a total global revenue base of around 4.7 billion dollars. It’s currently sourcing $80 million of products out of India for other markets, registering a high double-digit growth rate since 2014. “Currently, the China-India combine represent less than 10% of our total revenue-…but in terms of growth rate, in the course of next three to five years, India is expected to be our fastest growing market,” said Decker.
Decker also said that even though its strategy of acquiring companies in the clean water and wastewater side is 90% complete, it may look at larger scale mergers and acquisitions in the industrial water management side. "There, I would say, we scan the world globally and certainly keep our eyes open in India...it's important that whoever we acquire has a capability in India, has a channel in India, or at least has a technology that we believe would be applicable to India that could be localised," Decker said.
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