JAMCO Interiors plans $150-million investment in India, to expand engineering and supply chain operations in India

JAMCO Interiors plans to invest $150 million over the next three-four years in India. The company is set to open a new engineering facility in Bengaluru’s Bannerghatta, while expanding its engineering and manufacturing capabilities in the country.

“We opened another facility and have hired 20-30 people over the last two-three months. We plan to hire another couple of hundred people over the next few months,” the company said.

In an exclusive interaction with businessline, Kate Schaefer, CEO and Executive Chair of the Board, said India’s aerospace engineering talent remains underutilised and is often viewed only as a low-cost engineering destination.

“India has been seen as a place for low-cost engineering, as opposed to our experience that this is a place where you can hire some of the best talent. We can design in India as well,” Schaefer said.

“We can hand over the design responsibilities for some of these products to these engineers. Indian engineers want to design, not just work on packages,” she said. “We’re going to design in India. It’s not just about offloading work to India.”

On the manufacturing side, Schaefer said the company is looking to diversify its supply chain beyond Japan.

“Today, we assemble them and everything is purchased through our supply chain in Japan. Frankly, that supply chain doesn’t have the capacity to keep up with our growth. We expect to grow internally by about 2.5 times over the next three-four years.”

“As a result, the supply chain that is currently concentrated in Japan needs to be expanded to other parts of the world. I have long experience with India’s supply chain and suppliers, which are excellent. Along with the design engineers, we’re going to build our manufacturing engineering capability and have that team work with suppliers here in India.”

She added that alongside this expansion, the company’s procurement from Indian suppliers is expected to increase significantly over the next few years.

Sanjeev Sen, Chief Operating Officer, JAMCO Interiors, said the company’s engineering footprint across Pune and Bengaluru will span about one lakh sq ft.

“The team in Pune and Bengaluru will help us build a much wider supplier base. Initially, they will focus on two commodity groups, along with wire harnesses, before expanding to the remaining strategic commodities,” Sen said.

“I believe we will work with around 90 suppliers across Karnataka, Maharashtra and other regions. South India is particularly rich in terms of its supplier base,” he said.

“Over the next nine months, we hope to source about 30 per cent of our key commodities from India,” Sen added.