Divya Makhija
For Barco, the Kortrijk-based company that functions in the visualization and collaboration space, helping enterprises work in tandem to wow audiences has been the motto. Having stepped into India in 1996, the company today boasts of around 15% of its global workforce here. Besides making screens (for the large video wall division), the company also has a software and hardware research and development division in the three domains of entertainment, enterprise and healthcare.
The company claims a 50% market share of world cinemas and 54% of Indian digital cinema theatres for its projection systems. Their work at Akshardham in Delhi Datta Peetham in Mysuru has been spoken about in the past. Their video walls assist accurate decision-making in emergency response, disaster management etc. while ClickShare helps wireless collaboration in meetings. In a brief chat with CXO Today, Barco India Managing Director Rajiv Bhalla shares his vision for the future:
CXO Today: What are the challenges that you see in India to make things work in healthcare?
Rajiv Bhalla: The biggest challenge we face in India is the lack of guidelines. Another challenge is the fact that 80% of India’s population lacks insurance coverage and cannot afford high-cost medical examinations.
CXO Today: India has been talking of telemedicine for ages now and with some success. Is this one area they can work with?
Rajiv Bhalla: We work more on teleradiology, which is related to image visualization. We enable collaboration between a scanner placed in one part of the country and a doctor reporting remotely. Our solution ensures that the remote radiologist reports confidently by displaying pixel-perfect DICOM images. We are awaiting regulations and guidelines which will enable us to create a greater impact in the Indian teleradiology market.
CXO Today: Are you open to working with state and central governments knowing well that decision making is slow, and payments delayed?
Rajiv Bhalla: We do work with the state and central government hospitals to create awareness, but demand fulfilment is mostly carried out through our partners/healthcare systems integrators. Also, we believe that there is right intent and commitment from the government’s side. The system recognises that we need to improve our overall basic healthcare facilities and we have seen the larger government establishments like the AIIMS etc, invest more in equipment.
CXOToday: What are your plans to expand your healthcare sector in India?
Rajiv Bhalla: We’ve got a robust partner ecosystem in place, but are keen on further strengthening our partner ecosystem. We are looking at some India-specific offerings on modality solutions, digital imaging monitors, etc. and then aligning the right price points and service support to scale it in the country.
CXO Today: What is the strategy you have for your partners?
Rajiv Bhalla: In a B2B domain, it is really critical to have the right set of partners, train them and expose them to continuous levels of training and trends on the product and we continue to do that by conducting global partner meetings every year.
CXO Today: How is India placed in terms of BARCO’s global focus and way forward?
Rajiv Bhalla: We have totally redefined our India business model because we believe that India is a value-driven market and to succeed in India, you need to adapt to Indian value propositions, price points, etc. We need to create infrastructure in terms of ensuring that you have basic medical care solutions provided to the patients. The government is trying to also bring in a lot of the underserved folks under the insurance coverage of the Ayushman Bharat Scheme. As of today, the adoption levels for our products is low primarily because of the price equation.
CXO Today: So other than healthcare, what are your country expansion plans?
Rajiv Bhalla: Over the last three years, we’ve seen our revenue double in India, and this essentially happened because we have strengthened our partner ecosystem, improved on our customer centricity and also brought in “In Country for Country” products, both to address the cinema space as well as the control room space. So, for Barco, we see these two segments as the key segments that are going to drive continuous growth irrespective of the economic slowdown.
CXO Today: Could you elaborate on the “In Country for Country” theme?
Rajiv Bhalla: Essentially, for markets like India, it’s our belief that if you want to succeed, you can’t adopt a one-size-fits-all approach. After identifying your key growth verticals, you must create specific products and pricing and go-to-market alignments that fit the needs of the consumer. In India, we have a large manufacturing setup for the large video wall space where we produce Rear Projection cubes that we export to 90 countries worldwide. We leverage that, along with our R&D capability in the country to bring certain value definitions, certain products with some tweaked features for the semi-premium segment.
CXO Today: Does your focus on sustainability impact your innovation or is it vice versa? Can you elaborate on that?
Rajiv Bhalla: Under sustainability, we look at three pillars – caring for our people, caring for the planet and caring for the community. When we say caring for our people, it’s about caring for the employees within Barco where we create an environment where they not only value add to themselves, but they also value add to the organization and they have fun while doing that. We have continuous learning and development programs that we expose our teams to, we have a lot of engagement activities that are driven by a special group to keep them motivated at work.
Caring for our planet is more around ensuring that we minimize the carbon footprint. So, we go into a lot of smaller things like driving energy efficiency, moving to LED lighting, etc. Then, we also work on reducing the carbon footprint by ensuring that we plan and minimize our travel requirements. We also work towards using recyclable green material for our manufacturing process and ensure that whatever e-waste is generated is disposed of in a healthy and correct manner.
Talking about caring for our communities, we believe that all of us have an obligation to give back to society. So, beyond the mandated 2% CSR that all companies must contribute, we involve our associates in volunteering activities for the CSR initiatives. Today, we associate with four entities as far as our CSR initiative is concerned – CAN Support, which provides palliative care for terminal stage cancer patients, Indus Action, which provides education, Sakshi NGO, which is a school and finally, Urja, which works around women health in Uttar Pradesh.
