Panasonic opens innovation centre with TCS in Bengaluru

Panasonic has recently 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.

"The Centre of Excellence (CoE) in the IIC will focus on five domains spanning connected home/community, mobility, energy, industrial and financial solutions, with the partners collaborating in the knowledge of technologies, industry best practices and understanding of the growing domestic market," said the Indian arm of Panasonic in a statement here.

Transforming its business model to offer disruptive technologies in the Internet of Things (IoT), Mobility and Artificial Intelligence (AI), Panasonic is foraying into local manufacturing and development of appliances.

"Our partnership with Panasonic is unique as our knowledge and expertise will enable market specific smarter, disruptive and innovative solutions," added TCS Vice President Regu Ayyaswamy in the statement.

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.