 TVS Electronics Ltd, India's leading computer peripherals manufacturer, has launched India's first ever 'Made in India'
set-top boxes (STBs). The DTH STBs are being manufactured at its newly commissioned, automated, high-volume manufacturing line in Chennai. TVS-E has also signed up an agreement with Siti Cable Network, part of the Zee Network, as its first customer in India for this.
Commenting on this momentous achievement, Gopal Srinivasan, director, TVS-E, says, "We've taken a bold step in being the first Indian company in this business. This will help the company become a strategic player in the fast emerging digital home market in the near future. With Zee Network as our customer, we're very confident of scaling up to 20,000 STBs per month by December 2004."
Backed by a team of design and manufacturing engineers, the state-of-the-art facility has been commissioned by TVS-E with an investment of Rs 4 crore, and has a capacity to produce 50,000 STBs per month.
Commenting on the tie-up with TVS-E, Jawahar Goel, vice-chairman, Zee Network, adds, "In TVS-E we found an ideal Indian company which has design and manufacturing capabilities to locally produce
STBs. TVS-E's excellent track record in maintaining high quality standards offers us a unique advantage over imports. We have been importing and selling 15,000 STB units per month and intend switching over to locally manufactured STBs by the end of September.”
TVS- E expects to sell about 75,000 boxes in the next five months of this year, at a revenue of Rs 20 crore. However, the inverted tariff structure of 20 per cent import duty and 0 per cent ED for full import, against full import duty and 16 per cent ED on parts imported is a deterrent for local manufacturing. If these issues are sorted out, TVS-E expects a steep increase in local manufacturing.
The Indian market already has a large installed base of 80 million TV sets and over 48 million households have cable access which is growing at over 15 per cent. This offers a unique opportunity to large hardware and design companies like TVS-E to build STB locally. The STB market can be segmented into cable-based, satellite-based and broadband-based, depending on market need and broadcasters.
TVS-E will continue to invest in this direction to eventually offer cable, satellite and broadband STBs in future.
TVS Electronics, a part of the 90-year-old TVS Group, is one the largest manufacturers of computer peripherals in the country. The company is organised into Strategic Business Groups - Products and Solutions (P&S) and Electronic Manufacturing Services (EMS).
The range of offerings from the P&S Business group includes Dot Matrix printers, power products, keyboards, supplies, transaction solutions, and all-in-one point of sale (PoS) system. These products benefit from TVS-E's large distribution network, which reaches over 350 towns across the country with three national distributors, more than 150 regional distributors and over 2,000 authorised dealer partners. The EMS Business group offers contract manufacturing services (CMS) and customer support services (CSS). The company has manufacturing facilities in Tumkur and Chennai, which are both QS-9000 certified.
RR
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TVS Electronics rolls out STBs
