Centum investing Rs 200 cr in B'luru

Electronics company Centum Electronics is investing Rs 200 crore in Bengaluru, its chairman and managing director, Apparao V Mallavarapu, said on Monday.

“We are investing Rs 200 crore in Bengaluru. Out of this, we have already spent Rs 80 crore, and will be investing another Rs 20 crore in the course of the next two to three months. The remaining Rs 100 crore will be invested over the next 18 months,” Mallavarapu told DH.

“Most of this investment will be on infrastructure, land acquisition and equipment, as four of our existing facilities are running full to their capacities. All the investment will be made at a single place near Devanahalli,” he said.

Stating that the company will need additional workforce with an increased investment, Mallavarapu said, “My estimate is that we would need around 500 more people over the course of the next three years.”

He also added that the ‘Make in India’ campaign “boosted the confidence” of the company for the said investment, although he affirmed that they “would have done this even if ‘Make in India’ was not there”.

Mallavarapu also said that the company will be adding four more people to its sales force team in the coming days. Out of these four, two will be based in the UK, which already has three, taking the total to five salesmen. The remaining two salesmen will be posted in the US and France apiece, who already have one person posted at both places.

The UK sales office controls the sales operations of the company for entire Europe, except France.

“The number might seem to be small, but it costs around $400,000 per workforce per year. This is quite a huge cost,” he said.