By Sandhya Malhotra
Outdoor lighting is the biggest application for LED lighting. The return on investment (ROI) in LED manufacture, when compared to other lighting technologies, is realised faster, according to the latest market study by Frost & Sullivan, titled, ‘Indian LED Lighting Market’. Emerging applications, such as outdoor advertisement illumination, LED retrofit bulbs, LED lanterns and flashlights, are expected to be the biggest adopters of LED lighting in the coming years.
According to Niju V, deputy director, South Asia and Middle East automation and electronics practice, Frost & Sullivan, “Indian LED lighting market was worth $49.6 million in 2009 and is expected to reach $399 million by 2015, growing at a CAGR of 41.5 per cent.”
Presently, the LED market in India is negligible and, therefore, plans need to be prepared to introduce LED concepts and applications in India in a systematic way. Largely, LEDs have also found increasing adoption among automotive and outdoor applications due to their small form factor and high lumen/watt ratio. The high energy consuming industries will also adopt LED lighting, for example, in municipal corporations, the amounts spent every year on street lighting and its maintenance is huge, says the report.
Objective of the report
The key objective of the report, released at an event in New Delhi, organised by Frost & Sullivan, was to ascertain the actual size of the LED lighting market in India. Today, nobody has validated numbers, in terms of market size. Hence, for the first time, Frost & Sullivan has come out with this cooperative report.
The LED lighting market has its share of challenges, since LED installations require more complicated design spanning the thermal and electronics domains, says the report. LED lamps continue to be quite expensive compared to conventional lamps, thus hindering penetration in the price sensitive Indian market. Moreover, the advent of cheaper LED lamps from countries such as China and Taiwan, which account for a key portion of the unorganised market in the country, has also hindered the penetration of multinational brands in the Indian market.
The report also highlighted that the government has an ambitious plan to supply lighting to all by 2012, without any extra burden on the existing supply system. It is, therefore, very essential to conserve energy by using the most energy efficient products.
First report on LED lighting
The report is the first of its kind in India and took about five months to be completed. “We spoke to more than 25 LED lighting companies and also learnt about the latest trends in the market, both internationally and in India. Besides understanding the LED lighting business, we also looked at a whole lot of initiatives by government and NGOs in terms of how they want to take the rural electrification programmes forward. Also, the report looked at the role of LED lighting as an energy efficient technology in these programmes,” says Niju.
