Niranjan Mudholkar

We at Veira have proudly turned ‘Quality’ into our competitive advantage. To improve ‘Quality’, we focus on real-time insights about what needs to be improved during the production process.

February 2023: In this exclusive interaction with Niranjan Mudholkar, Editorial Director, Pro MFG media, Sharan Maini, Director Operations, Veira Group, says that Veira has grown by 300 percent in the last five years and expects to grow by 100 percent each year due to its growing customer base, integration of more prominent brands, and addition of new product lines to its basket of offerings.

Since its inception in 1975, the Veira Group has been involved in the manufacture of electronic products. How has the overall electronics manufacturing industry in India evolved since then?

India takes pride in being the world’s sixth-largest manufacturer. Indian manufacturing began in electronics with mobile phones and has had great success. India intends to go deeper — and into components (PCBs) — and eventually create an ecosystem of strategic materials, including lithium and the feedstock used to make PCBs. These areas have long been overlooked as we have only become commodity exporters. We concentrated on exporting raw materials rather than adding value to those materials. We are now witnessing the creation of an electronic manufacturing ecosystem through a broad and deepening policy framework. This deepening extends to semiconductors and beyond. In the last 6-7 years, the government has systematically rebuilt the manufacturing sector through PLI and other programs. Apart from Vietnam and Taiwan, the world now looks to India as a reliable source of technology

The Veira Group has recently invested Rs.200 crore in its new manufacturing plant. What factors are driving this growth?

Veira is now North India’s No. 1 ODM Manufacturer (for Smart TVs). The factors driving our growth are that we are focused on establishing ourselves as a modern manufacturer focusing on Design as well as R&D for the LED TV as a product in contrast to the other manufacturers who have solely focused on assembly and screw technology with the dependability of Chinese manufacturers. Our cutting-edge infrastructure and setup, which includes high-reliability machines, have established international standards. We also have a strong partner and supplier ecosystem that helps us keep up with the latest technological developments.

Tell us about the Group’s overall manufacturing footprint at present in terms of a number of facilities, total capacity, and capabilities in the context of manufacturing different products.

The Group produces LED TVs in two expansive manufacturing facilities in Noida – Sector 63 and Phase 2. The company has a total production capacity of Smart TVs amounting to 4 million LED TVs. The newly begun Phase 2 plant currently has 400 000 square feet dedicated to LED TV production. In addition, the plant has the largest AHU-based (10K property) clean room in North India. The plant has five zero handling, completely automated high-aging FA lines and five LCM lines. Furthermore, the PCB assembly capacity of the plant is being upgraded to produce 20K LED TV mainboards and PCBs per day. With the state-of-the-art facilities and equipment, the Veira Group can now produce one LED TV every 5 seconds. Veira Group has manufactured more than 300,000 TVs in the last four months. Today, the Veira Group manufactures not only LED TVs but also washing machines, air coolers and speakers.

Engineering and innovation play a key role in the electronics manufacturing industry as consumers are becoming increasingly demanding. How is the Veira Group addressing this issue?

Every OEM brand needs to move with time and the changing consumption pattern of its consumers. With the help of its partners and a key focus on R&D as well as on innovation, the Veira Group introduces and implements numerous cutting-edge features and technologies into all of its products. All of this is done while achieving multiple firsts in the product development stage. The various innovations aim to create intuitive TVs that cater to the ‘New Indian Customer’. Today, from the Silicon Valley to Osaka, Veira has a strong alliance with all vendors and partners worldwide.

The pandemic and various geopolitical factors have disrupted the global supply chain drastically for almost every industry. How has it affected your industry and how are you dealing with the same?

The Indian consumer durables industry remains highly dependent on China for its key components, namely open cells, LED backlight, PCBs and more. This comes as no surprise that the industry has been adversely affected as the supply chain has got disrupted due to rising cases of Covid in China. Chinese factories are unable to complete orders as they still operate on less-than-optimal outputs. This has led to a cascading effect on supply chain shortage. However, we at Veira could foresee the problem and we increased our inventory levels for the components from China. Secondly, we have multiple suppliers for each of the above items, due to which the impact on us was minimal, and we could meet our commitments on the delivery side to our customers.

Currently, even though, we have stockpiled supplies for at least two months, and in our industry, most of the manufacturers have maintained inventory to cover at least 2-3 months, it is still necessary to wait and see what happens after the Chinese New Year to determine whether factory production resumes and whether or not workers in China return. If the situation worsens, the supply chain will be affected after March 2023 and beyond.

Quality is one of the key differentiators for manufacturing organizations. Tell us how the Veira Group is leveraging the power of Quality to stay competitive in the market?

We at Veira have proudly turned ‘Quality’ into our competitive advantage. To improve ‘Quality’, we focus on real-time insights about what needs to be improved during the production process. Each stage in the manufacturing process can generate an enormous amount of data. Our automated data collection tools have evolved to capture, combine and analyze manufacturing data as it happens. This data helps improve the production process, decrease costs and risks and helps us make confident data-driven business decisions.

Q. At present, what is the annual turnover of the Veira Group and what kind of growth targets have you set for the next two years?

Veira has grown by 300 percent in the last five years and expects to grow by 100 percent each year due to its growing customer base, integration of more prominent brands, and addition of new product lines to its basket of offerings. With a company valuation of over Rs. 3000 crore (2022-2023) by third-party valuators, Veira aims to extend its operations to emerging markets.

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