NEW DELHI, July 10: Sony India, subsidiary of the consumer electronics giant Sony Corporation, will bring new products through the year and hopes to break even in three years, its managing director Yoshio Kubo said on Thursday.

"We are now making (minimal) losses but we are ready to absorb it as it is an investment for our future in this country. We hope to make more than break-even figures in three years time", Kubo said.

The company at present is importing most of the products and this is one of the reasons for the losses, he said.

He said the strategy of the company, a 100 per cent subsidiary of the US dollar 45 billion parent company in Japan, will be to try and indigenise costly components and penetrate into the middle and lower middle class segments.

"India as we understand is a price-sensitive market and we need to reduce our prices, by indigenisation or going for higher production to compete better in the market," he said. The coming months will see Sony increasing its product profile, he added.

Sony is introducing 10 new television models and a few hi-fi audio models in the country next month, Kubo said.

Kubo said Sony will utilise its production capacities at the manufacturing site in Daruhera, near here, better this year as the product profile expands.Currently the television production capacity in the factory is three lakh and audio production capacity is one lakh.

"We are using only 50 per cent of our capacities in televisions and audio systems and this year we will increase the utilisation," he said.No new product line or any fresh investment is required for this, Kubo said.

Stating that good quality integrated chips and picture tubes are not available here, he said Sony has set a target of 35 per cent indigenisation in colour televisions and 30 per cent in audio systems by the year end.

"Today the television sales in india is not encouraging enough for us to set up a separate picture tube manufacturing facility here," Kubo said adding the company will think in those terms only if the sales pick up to over half a million.Sony is also planning to increase its video-cd titles of hindi movies next month, he said.

The company is planning to maintain its last year's level of exports (US dollar 17.5 million), he added.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.