By Louis van Boxel-Woolf
(Reuters) – Swiss liftmaker Schindler will employ as many people in India as it does in China “sooner or later”, CEO Silvio Napoli told Reuters, with the company bound to expand there as the Indian market grows.
Schindler, which first established itself in India in 1998, now employs about 6,000 people in the country and would one day employ about 10,000 there, the same number as in China, Napoli said.
Urbanising India is a key growth market for liftmakers such as Schindler, particularly as neighbouring China struggles with a real estate crisis.
Schindler reported a 5% to 10% fall in new installations by volume in China in its second-quarter results on Friday, while they continued to grow in India.
“Our strategy has always been we manufacture where we build, where we install and maintain, provided there’s enough scale”, he said.
The company would “probably have to build more training centres” in the country in addition to the three it already has, he said, adding that the size of the Indian market justified Schindler’s expanding presence.
The Indian market would continue to grow, he predicted.
“For a similar population of China, India is still only one-sixth, one-seventh the size of the Chinese market”, Napoli said.
“That shows the potential.”
(Reporting by Louis van Boxel-Woolf; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
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