Lanner India to start manufacturing by end of 2004

Shipra Arora / New Delhi

Lanner Electronics India, a joint venture between D-Link India and Lanner Electronics of the US, is planning to start manufacturing in India by utilising D-Link’s manufacturing facility in the country. The company is expected to start manufacturing activities by the end of 2004 and is even considering the option of supplying products to its parent company. On the other hand, Lanner India will also be consolidating its position in the Indian market with the launch of new products in the network security space over the next few months. Also on anvil is the expansion of its channel network to further strengthen its reach in the market. With current revenues at Rs 12 crore the company is targeting around Rs 20 crore in revenues next year.

P K Jain

P K Jain, managing director, Lanner Electronics India, says that as far as manufacturing is concerned it is definitely there on the company’s future agenda and it is just waiting for enough volumes before jumping into it. He further informed that not all products would be manufactured in India and final decisions would be taken depending on factors related to efficient capacity utilisation. These will generally be high volume products. The foray into manufacturing is expected to give a significant thrust to the company’s position in the Indian market as it will render cost savings as well as allow it faster time-to-market. With the option of manufacturing for the parent company, Lanner India is also eyeing additional revenue gains. “There is lot of volume growth happening and the manufacturing facility in Taiwan is getting overbooked. So we are looking at supplying from India,” he added.

One of the biggest advantages for Lanner India would be that it already has a manufacturing set-up and infrastructure available through D-Link. There is already some area earmarked in D-Link’s facility for the company to undertake manufacturing as and when it decides to do so. “We don’t need to do much on infrastructure building and as the whole thing gets finalised we will be ready to start manufacturing in India,” he informed.

Lanner is also in the process of expanding its channel network to cater to its business expansion with the recent foray into network security. Presently, the company has around 8-10 distributors throughout the country. It is planning to almost double its channel force with the addition of another eight to nine distributors by March 2004. These additional distributors will be more focused on the network security business and will largely be system integrators.

On the product front, Lanner is quite upbeat about its network security business, which presently contributes around 10 percent of the company’s revenues. The company has estimated this to grow to 30-40 percent of its total business by end of 2004, with a slew of network security products lined up for release in the coming months. The company is presently working on some of the products along with one of its solution provider partners, Inventum Technologies. These include AG-2, an advanced firewall, IDS and dynamic routing solution and AG-3, an advanced access gateway incorporating a firewall, wireless access point, subscriber and bandwidth management and service selection solution. Introducing device management, allowing administrators to manage hundreds of firewalls from one console, AG-2 will be targeted at ISPs and ASPs wanting to provide managed firewall services to their customers. AG-3, on the other hand, will be targeted at public wired/wireless hotspots and corporate customers. The company has recently launched AG-1, an integrated VPN, firewall and access control solution for SME networks in November 2003. Lanner India and Inventum together will be coming out with a subscriber and bandwidth management system for small ISPs, cable operators and community/colony LAN operators, besides a desktop form-factor content filtering and caching server for enterprise and corporate networks.

Other products slated for launch in the industrial and embedded PC segment are Open Frame Panel PC, RISC processor-based embedded single board computer, industrial PCs and boards for PoS, kiosk and ATM markets; IMB range i.e. industrial motherboards with low power consumption, on-board CPUs for CTI and telecom applications. These new offerings will be available by June 2004.