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BANGALORE, Oct. 25

EMERSON Network Power India Ltd found that a food processing company making fruit juices was losing 45 per cent of its profits before tax because its processing plant was down thanks to power outage.

This kind of "downtime" linked to power failures could cost Indian corporations losses of Rs 20,000 crore annually, said Mr Anand Ekbote, Managing Director, Emerson Network Power (previously Tata Liebert), quoting a joint study by Emerson and Bangalore-based Feedback Consulting.

Emerson implemented an uptime solution for the fruit juice company with a payback period of 10 months. The company's margins are expected to show a dramatic jump.

"It shows that the IT and telecom, manufacturing and banks are not the only ones which require a high uptime," Mr Ekbote said. However, these industries are more aware of the need for uptime solutions than others.

Emerson is now on a mission to educate companies about the costs of downtime. Maintaining uptime goes beyond ensuring good quality of power, Mr Ekbote said. In the US and Japan, where the quality of power is not an issue, the market for UPS and uptime products are many times more than in India. This is because the more sophisticated an economy, the more it recognises the need for uptime.

In India, a joint Emerson and MAIT study found that Bangalore, the hub of IT and software companies, was bothered most about the impact of downtime on customer service. Around 75 per cent of respondents named image and customer service as the foremost reasons to maintain uptime.

Emerson, which has reorganised itself from a product company to one offering customised solutions for various industry verticals, offers a range of solutions.

Solutions are built into the rest of the infrastructure so that the equipment is kept dust-free, and comes with precision air-conditioning that keeps temperatures in a precise band, minimising loss of power.

The company studies individual customer requirements and criticality of down time to offer suitable solutions. Post-sales, it also offers remote monitoring, predicting potential problems.

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Emerson Network offers `uptime' solutions to cos — `Downtime' loss estimated at Rs 20,000 cr

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