French multinational Schneider Electric plans to infuse around Rs 350-400 crore in its Indian subsidiary Luminous Power Technologies. The investment will go towards doubling its manufacturing capacity and ramp up the solar business.

With these funds, Luminous will expand the capacity of its seven existing plants in the country, and set up two new manufacturing plants, generating direct employment for more than 2,000 people and supporting over 10,000 others, it said in a statement.

A major part of the investment will be focused on Luminous Power’s solar business, its fastest-growing segment, which it expects to constitute 40 percent of the company’s sales by 2025.

The funds will also help boost the company’s backward integration philosophy of key components, which is expected to come alive in the next 12-18 months.

“The investments will be used to pursue aggressive growth plans of Luminous, which entail doubling the battery and inverter production capacity, generating new employment opportunities, and ramping its solar business,” the statement added.

With this fresh capital, Schneider is planning to increase Luminous’ annual battery manufacturing capacity by 63 percent to 5.1 million by 2025 from the present 3.12 million. In addition, it is also looking to develop a new plant that will support the production of Tall-Tubular Batteries (TTB).

The plant will be set up in two phases, the first phase will see the manufacturing capacity of 30,000 TTBs, which will be further increased to 65,000 in the second phase.

As per Luminous Power Technologies Managing Director Vipul Sabharwal,  the investment will complement the growth vision to expand its manufacturing capabilities and specialized business divisions and will also help maintain the firm’s Atmanirbhar and Make in India principles of backward integration and employment generation.