MUMBAI, March 9: The Rs 62-crore Siemens Nixdorf Information Systems Ltd (SNISL) has dropped its plans of forming a joint venture for setting up a personal computer (PC)-manufacturing plant in the country. The company is exploring the possibility of setting up an assembly plant on its own. "We have deferred our plans of setting up a manufacturing plant here. A team of experts will visit India in the next six months and advise us whether it would make business sense to have a facility here or not," said Siemens Nixdorf managing director (MD) Patrice G Baranowska.The final decision on setting up a facility in the country is expected to be taken by the end of the year.The company had earlier decided to enter into a joint venture with a domestic counterpart for the purpose and held initial talks with some. "We tried to have a joint venture with a local company, but it failed," said Baranowska.
Meanwhile, Siemens Nixdorf has decided to shift its focus from plain products to solutions. "We want our channelpartners to take care of our product lines so that we can concentrate on providing total solutions," the company MD said.
The firm has identified telecom, transportation, utilities and banking as the key industries it will target to provide the solutions. According to Baranowska, Siemens Nixdorf has started training its people to build expertise on specific industries for providing solutions to these industries."At present, solutions make up only about 35 per cent of our revenue. We want it to go up to 50 per cent by 2000," said Baranowska.
SNISL is a 51:49 joint venture between Siemens Nixdorf Information System AG of Germany and Siemens India Ltd. The company hopes to touch a turnover of Rs 100 crore for the year ending September 30, 1998. By the end of the decade, the company hopes to attain a revenue of Rs 200 crore.
