Bangalore: Japanese electronics giant, Hitachi has identified India as a major market and would bring in strategic and high tech air conditioners to the country with an aim to capture at least 20 per cent market share in the package segment by 2007, a senior company official said.

He said India's package air conditioner market is forecast to grow to 84,000 sets by 2007 from the present figure of 28,000, accounting for 17 per cent of the Asian market in five years.

"We want to capture at least 20 per cent of that, otherwise we will die," the official said.

Similarly, the chiller segment in India is expected to grow from $ 25 million in 2000 to $ 53 million in 2005, the official said, quoting a study from the Japanese Refrigeration and Air conditioning Industries Association.

"Today, India's air conditioning market is small but it's growth rate in the coming years is going to be huge. We will bring in strategic and high-tech products and definitely expect India to be a big market," Fumio Ito, Hitachi's department manager, international sales department, international operation division, said.

"Outside Japan, Hitachi has manufacturing plants in Taiwan, China, Malaysia, Spain and Brazil, and the company has plans to set up one in India," said Ito but declined to set a time frame for doing so.

Managing director of Amtrex Hitachi Appliances(AHA), Naishadh Parikh, said AHA has evolved a strategy to increase its market share to 18 per cent from the current figure of 14 per cent.

Last year, AHA bucked the trend by growing at 30 per cent when the industry recorded a flat growth, he said.

The Ahmedabad-based Rs 370 crore AHA, a joint venture of Hitachi and the Lalbhai Group, is looking to outperform the industry this year too and is confident of a 40 per cent growth, he added.

Parikh said the company is giving an impetus to its institutional sales, adding, it is looking at export markets in the Middle East.

PTI