With the launch of a series of smart products including the Smart Glo LED Bulb, the company aims to address changing patterns of consumer demand, besides offering more value for money.
It was a media roundtable at Luminous Power Technologies Pvt. Ltd. and the occasion was to mark the power-backup giant’s three-decade presence in the country’s ever-expanding power & lighting space. The company used this platform to announce a few new smart products in lighting and electrical sphere. The first in the league was Smart Glo LED Bulb, followed by Zelio Wifi, and Regalia smart inverter. The company also demonstrated specific apps for these smart products which are a must for the customisable interface between the users and the products.
Team Luminous found it apt to count on major numbers depicting milestones that the company has achieved over the years, instilling that in last 30 years, the company has grown its portfolio to include a lot of products beyond inverters, which it is mainly known for. The company started manufacturing inverters in 1988, while batteries got included in the portfolio in 2004, which in 2011 was further expanded with home electricals. According to the company, which is the market leader in power back up solutions, enjoys high brand awareness, and the corresponding revenue has grown up multiple times to cross Rs. 3,000-crore mark.
“For Luminous, when it comes to revenue collection, inverter-battery continues to lead the league with 70% contribution. We directly deal with over 2,000 channel partners, sourcing the needs of around 75,000 retailers who are stocking and selling our products. This increase in the number of retailers from 40,000 to 75,000 has been registered during the last three to four years owing to the inclusion of home electrical segment in our portfolio of offerings,” informs Sachin Bhalla, VP-Marketing, Luminous Power Technologies Pvt. Ltd.
According to him, Luminous is the mix of two major business verticals – power solution business including inverter-batteries, solar-based products & solutions, and home electricals including designer fans, LED lighting solutions & switches. Besides, there are other products including water purifiers and stabilisers. For all these offerings, the company has an extensive installed base of 70 million customers across the country. Luminous does not only market its products in India, but also has visible footprints in overseas markets. “We export a bit of our product categories to destinations like Nepal, Africa and other South East Asian countries,” he shares.
With around 6,000 employees, Luminous has created a formidable base in the country’s increasingly competitive electrical & lighting markets. It believes in strong presence for which it is convincingly meeting its set objectives time and again – be it about expanding consumer base or bringing innovations. Its R&D units at multiple locations – including NCR, Himachal Pradesh, Hossur – close to its factory in Bengaluru – are nothing but the testimonials of the same.
Explaining the journey so far with Schneider Electric, Bhalla explains, “Schneider invested in Luminous five years ago and took majority stake that even passes over the management control. As such there is no big change, but we have become more process-oriented, and our infrastructure now is at par with that of any international entity. This is because of the integration of automation in entire process including manufacturing, which helps us in improving the quality of the output and technology.”
He adds, “A remarkable boost can be seen in the product quality & innovation that has gone up manifold based on the technological input from the parent company. We have actually increased our spending on branding and marketing activities for enhanced brand awareness. Nonetheless, major changes wouldn’t have been made as we do not want to lose our existing base in the market that we developed in more than two decades. Now that we have grown big, we also have to figure out ways to give consumers more value for money. At the same time the consumer demand is also changing; so is our product portfolio.”
Notably, the company is spending a lot of money, time & energy in compiling a new forward looking portfolio wherein it believes that the connectivity would be the central theme. “Today, smart phone has brutally killed many gadgets from recent past, for instance, remote controller. And the credit for this transitional change should go to the product designers who developed these products considering users’ preference & convenience. In the process, they added various features and attributes turning these products into a system that can respond to users’ call. This development has allowed users to do customisation and enjoy better user experience by enhancing the accessibility of the system to operate the devices from anywhere, of course, through IoT,” asserts Bhalla.
Adding more to it, Naveen Goudar, Sr. VP R&D Purchase & Quality HEB, Luminous Power Technologies Pvt. Ltd. opines that it was a tough call when it comes to incorporating technology. “Which technology choices should be better has always been one of the most crucial and important decisions for a company like ours. This is because we are not a core technology entity and we love to know as which of the available technologies would be the most valuable for us. This has certainly become vital because the time for design competition is over, as now, the technology choices are aggregating,” clarifies Goudar.
According to him, amongst many available options for wireless connectivity, the choice here may be the long-range connectivity, where a remote player is important. “One such technology is GSM, which facilitates SIM-based connectivity. Second choice may be of networking through WiFi, which is not limited to home technology now. The third choice for connectivity is through BLE – Bluetooth Low Energy – a fast growing technology, having found its acceptance by many consortiums that are bringing in a lot of new devices based on the same. The other technology choice is Edge – it’s a hardware piece that makes our devices talk to the cloud,” elaborates Goudar, adding that of all the available options, the company has taken a very conscious call to go with BLE.
Explaining about the technology used in Luminous Smart Glo LED Bulb, Goudar says, “There are a couple of reasons why we zeroed-in on BLE technology for our smart bulb. First, it is available in almost all the smart cell phones and is rapidly picking up. Second, it enables expanded operational area and is fast catching up in cell phones in terms of bandwidth and the range. Third, slowly all the upcoming WiFi routers or connectivity routers are expected to have embedded BLE chips inside. This means that a very strong and comprehensive BLE ecosystem is in the making. Going beyond, we have used BLE Mesh – a self-constructed Landmark Mesh System that facilitates a network which doesn’t limit the range for users. There is no central controller that is going to control the devices, rather it’s a self-governed mesh offering enormous amount of flexibility.”
Delving in to the manufacturing side, especially of the bulb, Jitendra Agrawal, Sr. VP-Home Electrical Business, Luminous Power Technologies Pvt. Ltd., states that overall, 90% of our products are manufactured in India. “In the last five years, we have enhanced focus on future-ready environment-friendly products. For smart bulb, we are not manufacturing 100%, but we are in an eco-system and taking all the help that is available across the world, wherever we can have the access to, based on the presence of our group companies. This is because, for smart bulb, there are some parts we do locally and for some, which is not yet done within the country by any manufacturer, we are sourcing from outside. However, as we would grow we may see these parts are also available locally.”
Responding to the market scenario, Agrawal says, “The smart bulb segment is still at a nascent stage and hence has a very niche market, which would grow further. Our objective is to participate in the given opportunity instead of competing or beating the other existing brands. We would continue our consumer-centric approach wherein our focus would remain to meet their needs. We want to offer them solutions to enhance their experiences. Our concern, therefore, would be to focus on what role should we play to contribute to the growth of the market.”
He suggests that the company is high on its awareness spree to educate both – the market as well as the end consumers who are the potential prospects. “Our primary objective is to educate the target audience about the kind of technology we have come up with. The more we would be successful in disseminating information to our consumers, the more the market will grow. And, this would be possible when the industry as a whole comes forward to take the initiatives as one player cannot build the market.”
While responding to the market penetration of Luminous products, Bhalla suggests, “We have been extensively using the feedback of our various marketing teams. In fact, we are proud to state that we have done an exclusive survey in order to do proper segmentation of our target audiences across the country based on their lifestyles, irrespective of demography and geography. For this valuable feedback, we are thankful to the efforts put forth by our marketing teams, the members of which directly contacted the end consumers to reach to a conclusive segregation.
“Besides all these, we are also using online space to expand our reach by penetrating deep into the remote areas where the internet has already reached. We observed that a big chunk of buyers are from areas representing tier 2 & 3 cities. With all these on our cards, we look forward to exploring more ways to engage our consumers who are contemporary and actually want their homes to reflect their personalities. Based on our understanding of our consumers’ mindset, we are planning some strategies that seamlessly merge with their behaviour. With all these, we are just trying to enrich their buying journey by offering them a blend of augmented and virtual reality.
Smart Products’ Bundle from Luminous
These new products from Luminous are the outcome of robust research and development, focused on customer-centric innovations.
Luminous Smart Glo LED Bulb is aimed at facilitating consumers a wireless control of their lighting system with the help of a special app that is available to download on playstore and iOS. It enables users to light up their homes with a variety of features. The Smart Glo Bulb can create vibrant lighting or a soothing atmosphere with a mix of different colours; with the help of which users can bring alive any space with a simple touch on the screen of their respective smartphones. They can make modifications as per their liking with versatile features ranging from brightness setting to colour adjustments.
The Smart Glo Bulb offers millions of colour options to choose from, allowing users to match the illumination with specific interiors or set the illumination to perfectly suit the mood in that point in time. The specific app that has been built to enrich the bulb allows various other possibilities like grouping of multiple lamps and setting the functionality to match the tunes of their favourite music numbers. Other attributes include certified bright LEDs, high surge protection and dual socket compatibility. Besides, users can go a step ahead with smart scheduling of the bulbs to automate lighting with alarm setting, which enables them to get notified of daily tasks and routines.
Similar to Smart Glo LED Bulb, Zelio WiFi can get connected with smartphones and help users remotely monitor the power situation at home from anywhere in the world. Zelio WiFi is a pure sine wave, state-of-the-art Smart Home UPS with WiFi connectivity that can display device statistics at the touch of a fingertip using an Android/iOS App. The App can display power back-up time, load percentage, battery charging time, battery charge status, input supply voltage, power cut trend and much more. With Zelio WiFi, users can remotely monitor the power situation at home from anywhere in the world.
Zelio WiFi is an example of the cutting-edge app-based technology that is aimed at helping users to manage the power outages more efficiently and comfortably. Zelio WiFi is a next generation product by Luminous which comprises of a Digital Signal Processing core that yields high performance and is equipped with a display that shows power back-up in hours and minutes, allowing the consumers to plan their day without any hassle and manage their appliances accordingly when there is a power outage
It can be used to provide power back up for all domestic appliances and comes with various in-built protection features to overcome issues like short circuit, over-heating or wrong wiring. It has a learning software that adapts to the different types of batteries and their current discharge status to predict the remaining back up time. It also offers an easy bypass switch to bypass the device and allow mains to be available without any wiring changes, in case of a device fault.
The third revolutionary product in the league is Regalia, a lithium-ion based power back-up system that can be wall mounted and comes loaded with multiple user-friendly features. Regalia is a compact power back-up system that is designed in an aesthetically pleasing and modern style with an expected lifespan of up to 10 years. It uses lithium ion technology which makes it maintenance free and removes the need of periodic water top up. This future-ready power back-up wonder comes with double charging options – with regular mains supply or through solar panels harnessing abundant solar energy.
Regalia is Luminous’ most sophisticated and smartest power back-up system yet. It is designed to suit modern sensibilities to seamlessly blend with the home décor for both contemporary and traditionally styled homes. It enables users to stay connected using WiFi. It also has a touch screen to view backup time, charging time or for configuration. It is safe, eliminating the risk of accidental contact by doing away with wires, terminals and includes an in-built safety mechanism to protect appliances from voltage surges and short circuits.
