Panasonic to make India regional hub

 Consumer durable firm Panasonic is making its Indian operations a regional hub with markets like Middle East, Africa and neighboring countries set to become a part of the new entity with effect from next month.

The Osaka-headquartered company is looking to leverage on India’s emergence as a manufacturing hub and its strategic location by making it a regional entity, to add to its five regions globally.
“From next month India will become a regional headquarter, covering areas like SAARC, Africa and Middle East and will report directly to global headquarters in Japan,” Panasonic India Manging Director Manish Sharma said.

Currently, Panasonic India comes under its Singapore-based establishment. Other regions are based out of Japan, North America, Asia, Europe and Latin America.

Asked about the reasons for making India a separate region, Sharma said, “Firstly, all these countries fall in the vicinity of India. Secondly, India has become a manufacturing hub and is strategically located and that could help in taking products to these markets.”

Sharma said that the company is in line to achieve its stated sales target of $1.65 billion in India in 2013-14. 

“We are in line of achieving double digit growth this fiscal. April-June period of last year was pretty good for the air conditioner business,” Sharma said. Panasonic India has set a revenue target of $3.66 billion by 2015-16.