Trane Interactive Solutions, an Ingersoll Rand brand, might start manufacturing residential air-conditioners at its upcoming plant in Chennai in 2014.

“In the second quarter of next calendar year, we will begin manufacturing at the Chennai plant. So far, we are only looking at manufacturing for commercial air-conditioning, but in 2014, we can also look at manufacturing residential air-conditioners as well,” said Sameer Nagpal, Vice President and Business Head – Residential Solutions, Ingersoll Rand India.

Ingersoll Rand India, the diversified industrial solutions company, has so far been importing finished air-conditioning products from its facilities in China, Europe and the United States. Its Chennai plant would be responsible for manufacturing commercial air-conditioning products for Trane and transport air-conditioning products for Thermo King (another brand of Ingersoll Rand), as of now.

“Our first focus would be the Southern markets, because of its geographical spread. Gujarat is another market that we are targeting, as according to our consumer insights, the uptake there is very good with regard to people’s desire to catch up with new concepts. Mumbai and Pune are the other target markets, besides the Delhi-NCR,” said Nagpal.

The company pegged its “go-to-market” expenditure for the first year of operations as $ 5-10 million, inclusive of marketing expenditure and consumer touch points. “We would be setting up 150-200 consumer touch points, inclusive of 100 experience zones by the end of current fiscal,” added Nagpal.

>heena.k@thehindu.co.in

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