In the last two years of the Covid pandemic, we have witnessed relationships of companies vis-àvis customers being impacted across industries. Lockdowns and drastic curtailing of movement posed the gravest challenges compelling industries to explore innovative ways to engage with their customers. Delta promptly switched to online interactions with key accounts, who readily adapted to the new mode of communication, realizing that it is the only way forward. A perceptible impact on the supply chain, logistics, and price hike was an area of concern. We also learnt lessons on cost saving, how to optimize procurement, and plan travel strategy, and the fact that we could still function on reduced budgets, i.e., without being expensive, we could still deliver. Pruning superfluous expenses, which were conventionally thought to be necessary or indispensable, was another big change.
We have experienced impacts of two kinds – the increase in demand and the drop in demand. As we cater to data centers as a customer segment, we witnessed a marked boost in demand for online communication. So, that is where Delta’s data center market share segment is doing very well. On the other side, we faced the brunt of huge government projects getting delayed, and by adopting workfrom-home strategy new projects of corporate campuses were put on hold or shelved. With mobility being affected, manufacturing/production was affected, and also demand for many products came down. Delta came out unscathed because we were catering to high demand from data center and IT segment, compensating other setbacks. Even in crisis, Delta moved on an even keel.
Digitization, followed by the 5G technology in communication, will actually give a huge momentum to digitized business. India is still in 4G stage, with a lot of digitization yet to happen, but the moment 5G comes into play most businesses would start adopting far more digitized models. Even as it will majorly impact the existing mega collaborative hyper data centers, 5G would move the market to edge computing, meaning every business will have to store some critical data near to the user or near to their functions. We see ourselves playing a major role in this space.
Cloud is another space that India has potential to grow exponentially. Many hyper-scaler companies are going to invest in India, and top players are in some way established in India either directly or through collaborative partners. In fact, in the next 5–6 years, we will see a huge boom of data centers where the current installed capacity of 500–600 MW data centers will have add on five times the current capacity each year. There will be projects of more than 300 MW, and Delta is already in discussions with some investors.
Delta caters to two kinds of segments, the traditional data centers where infrastructure needs, i.e., the UPS, batteries, and distribution units, which is the component portion, is provided and the other is engineered-to- order solution, where we have skilled architectures in our data centers, and have power containers that will be further enhanced with the advent of edge computing. Once the edge computing system comes into play, then the prefabricated data center concept will follow.
The biggest edge is that Delta is a strongly R&D-driven organization with 6–8 percent of its global sales revenue allocated to research and product innovation. We are also the largest ODM and OEM manufacturer of critical components that go into the making of a data center. Another advantage is our exceptionally competent team that has enriched our knowledge pool, besides the strong service network backup that we have across the country. The biggest strength, however, is our key customers, who are growing in this segment. Presently, we are focused on addressing further demands of our existing customers rather than scouting the market to fetch new clients. We have also deployed a lot of modular architecture with product offerings that are the most compact in the industry that actually allow the customers to grow as the business grows with them, which is much appreciated by our customers. We see ourselves enhancing the modularity and scalability of our prefabricated data centers to further enhance our business.
India is one of the sub regions of Delta, which is a huge focus area that exhibits the global management’s optimism about India as a potential market. This is the reason why the company is coming up with an R&D center at Bengaluru for strengthening its capability within India. We are also manufacturing in India that makes it viable to have an R&D facility within India. Delta is seeking to invest more than `500 million in India in terms of new factories, such as the upcoming global manufacturing unit in Krishnagarhi on the outskirts of Bengaluru, which, once completed, will have the capacity to not only cater to a huge captive market in India, but to rest of the world as well. Manufacturing is also set to boom with Make in India of the Indian government giving a boost to our industry.
The interview was published in Communications Today Magazine
