Panasonic opens 3rd global innovation centre in India to fuel innovation into B2B space

Soma Tah

Panasonic today announced the opening of its India Innovation Centre (IIC) and a Centre of Excellence (CoE) in Bangalore in collaboration with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). After Japan and US, this is the third innovation centre of Panasonic globally.

Located at the TCS Bangalore campus, this state of the art CoE will create a platform for the best minds from the country together to develop innovative solutions on Panasonic’s five key focus areas – Connected/ Community, Mobility, Energy, Industrial and Finance Solutions. TCS' industry knowledge, best practices, and understanding of Indian market will help creating the innovation ecosystem for Panasonic.

Though the company is best known for its consumer electronics products, but interestingly more than 70 percent of the company's revenue worldwide comes from selling to business, not consumers. Hence, the IIC will focus on three broad solution areas- mobility, energy storage as well security and surveillance solutions.

The focus will also be on open innovation in the Consumer Electronic(CE) space and to develop innovative solutions for specific geographies leverage the technology already available with the company.

"Panasonic has invested 240cr in the IIC initially for five years and expects to create business opportunities worth Rs 2400cr here in India," said Manish Sharma, President and CEO, Panasonic India and South Asia and Vice President Appliances Company Panasonic Corporation. "India is one of the three top growing geographies of Panasonic and the company expects a contribution of 4 percent of its global revenues coming from this market alone by 2019," said he.

One of the consideration behind choosing India to set up its third innovation centre is the country's cost-efficient and conducive policy environment as well as the vibrant technology startup ecosystem which can be leveraged to fire up the innovation engine in B2B solution space.

Daizo Ito, Managing Executive Officer, Regional Head for ISAMEA, Senior Vice President, Eco Solutions Company in charge of Overseas Business said, “It will work as a hub that will be central to developing new age technology driven range of products that will emerge from India for both domestic and global consumption. This will also strengthen India’s position as a critical region for the corporation to lead innovations in the ISAMEA (India, South Asia, Middle East and Africa) market.”

“Solutions developed from this ‘Centre of Excellence’ will not only benefit industry by creating new business opportunities but also make technology more relevant and impactful for Indian Consumers and customers from South Asia, Middle East and Africa,” said Regu Ayyaswamy, Vice President & Global Head, Engineering & Industrial Services, TCS.