Amara Raja set to enter electric car battery space

Diversified group will also foray into healthcare by setting up hospital in Tirupati

Hyderabad: With electric cars gaining traction in India and abroad, Amara Raja Group (ARG), an established player in automobile batteries, is looking to enter electric car batteries space in due course. “Our R&D centre is working on electric car batteries and other new technologies.

However, market is not yet ready for big volumes and the investment that is required for making electric car batteries. We are ready to enter into the segment whenever market is ready,” Ramachandra N Galla, founder and Chairman, Amara Raja Group, told The Hans India on the sidelines of CII Partnership Summit in Visakhapatnam recently.

He further said that the group would also foray into tooling space as lots of automobile companies were located in the country. “This segment is an important for the company due to presence of large number of automobile companies around,” he said.

According to Galla, Amara Raja Group will also enter healthcare segment with its infrastructure company. “We are also foray into healthcare segment. We will set up multi-specialty hospitals through an infra company,” he said. The group’s first multi-specialty hospital will come up in the temple town of Tirupati.

The diversified group will also focus on infrastructure segment by going for property development. “In the power systems, we have recently entered into projects space. We are now qualified up to 1,200 KV. We are very active in this area now,” he said.

Galla further said that the group was in the process of setting up manufacturing facility for mobile handsets. “This is another new are for us and we are setting up the facility,” he added.

In the automobile and other batteries, the company is utilising its entire installed capacity. “We have all the existing capacity in batteries running at full and we are moving to the new capacities,” Galla explained.

The Amara Raja Group signed a memorandum of understanding with Andhra Pradesh government at the Partnership Summit to invest Rs 5,000 crore in the State and most of this will go into its investments into new areas and also for expansion. “We may have to invest some more as we are entering into many new areas,” he said.

Under the terms of the MoU, the planned Rs 5,000 crore investments are expected to generate nearly 10,000 new direct jobs and 20,000 indirect employment opportunities over the next two to three years. “This MoU provides us a great opportunity to help create the infrastructure for rapid industrialisation.

With the cooperation of the AP government, we are confident that we will be able to make the state an industrial hub and attract investment from both national and global players," Galla said on the occasion of signing the MoU.