Wednesday, February 19, 2014: FCI OEN Connectors Ltd is a supplier of grade connectors. The company is a 100 per cent subsidiary of FCI Electronics, headquartered in Singapore. In a conversation with Srabani Sen of Electronics Bazaar, Alex Perrotta, CEO, FCI Electronics, and Rajesh Arakkal, general manager, FCI OEN, share the technological and buying trends in the Indian connector market as well as the company’s growth plans.
EB: How important is the Indian market for FCI?
According to Bishop & Associates Inc, a market research firm specialising in the global electronic connector market, India’s connector market is growing rapidly and is expected to reach US$ 1.2 billion by 2017. India, being one of the top three fastest growing markets in the world, is a strategic market for FCI’s business. FCI India supports most of our operations around the globe, including US, Europe and China. We have two vital manufacturing plants located in India—one in Cochin, which specialises in connectors, while the one in Bengaluru specialises in cable assembly. Incidentally, our operations in India create jobs for 1200 people directly and approximately 1000 people indirectly.
FCI’s vision for India is to double its sales by 2017. To support this vision, we are investing and expanding our manufacturing, sourcing and R&D divisions in India in order to design, develop and manufacture high quality connectors and cables for India’s domestic markets, and also export these solutions to markets worldwide.
EB: Are there any joint ventures in the pipeline?
No, we do not have any joint ventures lined up. But we are constantly seeking improvements in our relationships with business partners to align our long term product and growth strategy.
EB: What is your distribution network like? Are you planning to expand it?
We have been working closely with most of the global and regional distributors in India since we started our operations in 1981. These channel partners contribute to a significant share of our business as they cover more than 1000 customers and are well distributed in all the prominent industrial cities across India.
In terms of our future expansion plans and strengthening our collaboration with channel partners, we will continue to assess evolving market scenarios and align them with FCI’s strategic goals in India.
EB: Any plans for investments under the government’s MSIPS or EMC policies?
We are working with electronics manufacturing companies in Kerala to form one of the first brownfield electronics manufacturing clusters in Kerala.
EB: You have been operating in India since 1981. What transformations have you observed in the local connector market over the last 2-3 years?
We have seen a shift in demand from communications connectors to industrial connectors over the past two to three years. Within the industrial connector sector, the power, energy, automation, transportation and medical markets have shown significant growth.
As for the telecom segment, although its growth has plateaued over the past few years, we have seen a recent surge in demand for fibre optic transceivers, active optical cables and patches due to programmes such as ‘fibre-to-home’, ‘fibre-to-desk’, ‘fibre-to-antenna’, etc. We also believe that the telecom segment will steadily move towards high speed connectors due to the implementation of next-generation telecom initiatives such as 4G LTE, etc.
EB: What has your growth rate been like in India over the last two years?
FCI India has witnessed steady growth over the past years. In the last two years, we have experienced double digit growth. In 2013, we were one of the highest growing entities among FCI subsidiaries globally. Despite the stellar performance, we are aiming at an even higher growth rate for FCI India in the coming years.
EB: You have been catering to sectors like communications, industrial and instrumentation. What are the new products you are supplying to these sectors and how are these products becoming more advanced over the years?
FCI has a very strong presence in the communications sector and we have introduced many high speed connectors over this period—Millipacs, Metral, Airmax VS, etc—that support data transfer rates ranging from 4 GBps to 25 GBps. Some of these connectors are designed and manufactured at our design and engineering centre in Cochin.
In addition to these staple products for communications applications, we also offer ExaMAX, FCI’s newest high speed interconnect solution. This suite of products delivers high speed backplane, mezzanine and IO performance, scalable from 25 GBps up to 40 GBps signal speed. These connectors can also address a broad range of system architectures, including backplane, midplane, midplane orthogonal, direct orthogonal, cabled backplane, coplanar and mezzanine applications.
For the industrial segment in India, we have introduced high powered battery connectors, USBs, terminal blocks as well as customised connectors and cable assemblies for special applications specified by our customers. One of the solutions we have introduced in this market is Rotaconnect, a rotatable board-to-board connector. Its hermaphroditic ‘mates to itself’ design offers significant flexibility, enabling mating at any angle between +90° and -60°. This allows the connector to be placed anywhere on the PCB.
EB: What are your focus sectors? And from which sector is the demand for your products the highest?
We are seeing an increase in the demand for connectors and cable assemblies across several industrial markets, especially power, energy and transportation segments. We have also observed encouraging signs of revival from the communications markets, especially with Indian telecom companies, due to the Indian government’s Preferential Market Access policy. As such, these markets will continue to be FCI’s focus sectors in India.
For the communications market, we have an extensive line of new high speed connectors, including ExaMax, in the pipeline. We will continue to focus in this sector by leveraging our product spread, technological lead and market expertise to meet the evolving requirements within this sector.
For the industrial markets, we will be concentrating on the power, energy, automation, LED and transportation sectors as we believe these are some of the fastest growing segments in India. By leveraging our strong presence, proven legacy and in-depth knowledge of the market and of customer needs in India, we are confident that we will meet the dynamic market demands within these sectors and continue to stay relevant in the coming years.
EB: Any new product launches in the pipeline? Have you launched any new product in the last six months?
We have quite a few launches in the pipeline, specifically for communications connectors. They include: the Millipacs and Metral HDX products. These are new high speed connectors that can support an extensive data transfer rate ranging from 4 GBps to 25 GBps.
We have also launched around 12 different connector series in the last six months. Some of our most popular solutions include Rotaconnect, a HPCE (high power card edge) connector, Mezzostak 0.5 mm, Bergstak 0.8 mm fine pitch connectors and 12 GBps SAS storage connectors for servers, which are able to support 25 GBps/channel and optimise PCB real estate.
EB: What are the technological trends in the connector market in India?
The communications market in India is moving towards high density, high speed connectors, transceivers and active optical cables. Another trend we are observing now is that communication connectors are finding new potential in industrial sectors due to advancements in industrial activities and evolving technological requirements. Some examples include the remote monitoring of solar farms, energy monitoring devices and medical diagnostics.
We are also seeing growing demand for miniaturised connectors as industrial requirements are shifting towards low pitch connectors for more real estate on the PCBs. The consumer market is also driving this development, as smartphone and tablet usage continues to proliferate in India and this contributes significantly to demands for miniaturised connectors.
EB: What are the buying trends in the connector market in India?
For standard products with a high volume of sales, cost remains one of most sensitive factors for our customers. However, customers are ready to invest heavily in high-end, innovative solutions that are niche or customised and not high-volume. Demand is also increasing for high-end interconnection solutions from our customers due to India’s advantage in labour costs, freight and exchange variations.
Electronics Bazaar, South Asia’s No.1 Electronics B2B magazine
