CEMA buys GE unit

CEMA Electric Lighting Products India (CEMA) has signed an agreement with GE Consumer and Industrial to acquire GE's consumer lighting business in India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan and Maldives.

GE will continue to focus on project lighting solutions offering. The CEMA brand, which was owned by GE, has been acquired by Saratoga Lighting Holdings. The latter has also been licensed to produce and market consumer lighting products and consumer luminaires in India under the GE brand.

The move offers greater growth opportunities for the consumer lighting business by aligning it with CEMA having consumer lighting and retail distribution as its main focus area and intends to invest and grow that business.

CEMA has also acquired the consumer lighting manufacturing facility at Limbassi, Gujarat. CEMA has agreed to provide transferred employees with a pay and benefit plan that as a whole is similar to what they enjoyed earlier with GE.

CEMA is a subsidiary of Saratoga Lighting Holdings; a company focused on the global lighting industry and has operations in several countries including the USA, China and India. "The goal is to grow the company into a leading provider of lighting products in the world," says Sabu Krishnan, CEO of CEMA.

"CEMA would be the preferred supplier to GE. To cater to the growing demand of GE projects business CEMA also plans to set up a fixture manufacturing facility," he added.

Saratoga Lighting is a portfolio company of Saratoga Partners, a US-based private equity firm that manages a group of investment limited partnerships with approximately $750 million of committed and invested institutional equity funds.

Krishnan, who leads CEMA, has spent over 26 years in the lighting industry and has a significant experience in running international operations. He has established and run several lighting-related operations in India and miniature lamp operations in USA and China.

He has also established manufacturing and supply chain for supplying machine parts and sub-assemblies to GE Lighting division in the USA.