“We are helping our customers to reduce power consumption foot print”

According to an estimate, by 2050, more than two-thirds of the world's population will live in cities—and over three billion people will live in new, expanded, or renovated urban settings. Accordingly, governments are deciding to develop 'sustainable, liveable city so as to accommodate this massive urbanization. "We need smarter ways to manage complexities, reduce operating cost, and increase efficiency," says Mr. Amit Maheshwari, Director – Marketing & Strategy, Carrier Air Conditioning & Refrigeration Ltd (a UTC Company).

Atone to McKenzy's report, which clearly says that the urban population is soon going to shoot up significantly, to accommodate such massive urbanization; there is a need to develop spaces that are smart and sustainable. "Going in line, we have products that are high on efficiency, and at the same time, sustainable too. We have developed quite a few products that are designed to withstand extreme Indian conditions," informed Mr Maheshwari adding that innovation is the driving force at UTC and that the company believes in bringing new technologies in every single area, it operates in. "We shall continuously develop new technologies in order to make sure that the solutions; we come up with, deliver intelligent comfort to our customers," he said adding that the company is helping its customers to reduce power consumption foot print on air-conditioning, which is supposed to be the highest contributor to a building's over all energy consumption. Buildings are estimated to consume 40% of the total energy.

Notably, unlike developed countries, India is at a very nascent stage of sustainable development and most of the buildings are yet to be built like airports, ports, railway stations, etc to enhance infrastructure. "Accordingly, for any new building, we should make sure to 'build right' the first way. We, therefore, need to design buildings with that future sustainable state in mind," he reiterated and added that the company does have the solutions for retrofitting existing buildings. "We can do so either by adding equipment in the existing setup or replacing the existing equipment with an all new technically advanced products. The solutions vary from building to building and even within the same building depending on the energy savings, investments, and payback period."

Interestingly, most of the products that the company supplies to its Indian customers are designed and developed in India. "In fact, we are truly in line with the government's Make in India campaign, as we already are manufacturing in India for over 25 years now. It won't be wrong if I say, we are one of those who are driving standards in the country," said Mr Maheshwari. UTC India manufactures entire range of light commercial products i.e. ducted, cassette, and package systems. "In terms of chillers, we have localized air cooled screw chillers almost three years back. Last year, we have localized our water-cooled screw chiller range," he said adding that the overall 'Make In India' campaign is also supported by growing customer demands on shorter delivery time.

Notably, buildings in India are a bit different than that of other parts of the world. Keeping this in view, UTC develops products that adhere to the specific standards and codes developed by the concerned authority so as to address the specific need extreme Indian conditions. "The standards and codes for the buildings are in development phase in India, though a lot of products do have standards and regulation in-place either under mandatory phase or voluntary. For example, for residential air-conditioning that is window and hi-wall ACs up to 2.0 TR capacity, single phase, fixed speed and cooling only has a star rating program from the Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE) and Ministry of Power (MoP). ECBC is another program on buildings run by BEE," said Mr Maheshwari insisting that UTC's products are developed to match these specifications and ensure that the buildings get more efficient.

Elaborating in what the company has on offer for its Indian customers; Mr Maheshwari said that except for lighting, UTC Building and Industrial Systems has every solution that goes in a building right from air conditioning to IBMS (controls), to elevators and escalators, to fire & security. "As far as our air conditioning segment is concerned, we have two brands– Carrier and Toshiba. In Carrier, we have the entire range of light commercial and commercial products starting from ducted system or cassette system all the way to VRF and chillers. Carrier was one of the first companies in India to locally manufacture air-conditioning systems with HFC refrigerants. In Toshiba, we have anything from a fixed speed hi-wall system to inverter hi-walls, cassettes, ducted, and VRF systems with all inverter technology, with very high efficiency. We do have Totaline, one of our brands that support the entire air-conditioning industry on various tools and tackles, ancillary items for the industry as well as the spare parts management for the products that we sell. We do have various other brands such as Edwards, GST, Interlogix, Kidde, Lenel, Onity, etc under fire & security segment, in various domains in terms of detection, alarm, security, as well as fire suppression. I would say that we have multiple solutions for a building and have leading brands in respective domains."

Meanwhile, the government's increased focus on Infrastructure development, which also includes the proposal for 100 smart cities, has opened new avenues for this technology giant. "In any case establishing smart cities means adding more buildings that are sustainable and can help improve the quality of life of the inhabitants. This implies smarter solutions in abundance in all the areas including air conditioning, refrigeration, elevators, escalators, and so on and so forth. We have a bouquet of products that are energy efficient and sustainable thus supporting the overall momentum of smart cities. However, we may need greater visibility for which we have already started expanding our distribution base. From last couple of years, we are increasing our presence in tier 2 and 3 cities, where the growth is much faster and around which quite a few smart cities can be developed in time to come," anticipated Mr Maheshwari.

According to him, service is vital for this industry and therefore the company has provision for delivering solutions right from the designing till execution that includes pre-sales, sales, installation to aftermarket support. "We probably have the largest fleet of over 350 exclusive dealers in the industry today. This is apart from quite a few multi-brand dealers as well. We have a couple of programs, wherein we invest a lot of time, resource, and money to make sure that we upgrade the soft skills of our channel partners, we continuously keep enhancing their technical knowledge in areas of trouble shooting, environment, health & safety of the technicians working at sites, by telling them dos and don'ts during the installation and the servicing process etc," said Mr Maheshwari.