Philips India Limited

Philips India Limited: Inside the Health-Tech Business Behind One of India's Legacy MNC Names Philips India Limited has been a fixture of Indian industry since 1930, but the business operating under that name today looks nothing like the Philips of light bulbs, radios, and televisions that older generations grew up with. Following Royal Philips' global pivot away from consumer electronics and lighting, the Indian subsidiary is now a pure-play health-technology company, organized around three segments — Health Systems, Personal Health, and Innovation Services — with manufacturing in Pune, a large software development base in Bengaluru, and a go-to-market built on independent distributors and modern trade. For FY 2024-25, the company reported total segment revenue of ₹6,467.4 crore, up 8.9% over the prior year, while profit before tax grew a much sharper 37% to ₹448 crore and profit after tax rose 20.1% to ₹309.3 crore. That gap between revenue growth and profit growth is the central story of the year: Philips India grew slower on the top line but expanded margins meaningfully, a deliberate outcome of management's stated strategy of prioritizing profitability over market share in a tough macro environment. Segment-wise Snapshot (FY24 vs FY25, ₹ Cr) Segment FY24 Revenue FY25 Revenue Growth FY24 Profit FY25 Profit % of Total Revenue Health Systems 2,833.8 3,264.0 +15.2% 126.4 198.0 ~50% Innovation Services 2,271.9 2,327.5 +2.4% 208.6 223.8 ~36% Personal Health 765.8 806.6 +5.3% (0.5) 31.9 ~12.5% Services – Others 65.9 69.3 +5.2% — — ~1% Total 5,937.4 6,467.4 +8.9% 334.5 453.7 100% The Three Businesses Health Systems is the company's largest segment, contributing roughly half of total sales at ₹3,264 crore in FY25, up 15.2% year-on-year. This is the medical-equipment business — MRI and CT scanners, ultrasound systems, radiology and informatics software — sold and distributed to hospitals and diagnostic centers, alongside contract manufacturing and contract R&D that Philips India performs for the broader Philips group. The segment has been navigating real headwinds: inflation, adverse currency movements, and regulatory-driven supply chain disruption have all played a role, and the company's addressable-market share has actually declined compared to the previous year. Management has been explicit that this is a conscious trade-off — a "balanced portfolio strategy" that sustains profitability even where it costs market share in select categories. The results bear this out: segment profit grew 56.6% to ₹198 crore, far outpacing the 15.2% revenue growth. On the product side, the segment has leaned hard into AI-enabled equipment — the CT-5300 (billed as one of the first fully AI-powered 128-slice CT systems), Smart Speed MR imaging, and the Advanced Visualization Workspace 15 platform — while continuing "Make in India" manufacturing at its Pune Healthcare Innovation Centre, home to the locally-built Affiniti ultrasound series. Innovation Services, contributing about 36% of sales at ₹2,327.5 crore, is the segment most people outside the industry would never guess exists. It is essentially a captive global R&D and software engineering arm — the Philips Innovation Campus in Bengaluru, established in 1996, now employs over 4,200 people building clinically relevant software across the entire health continuum, from healthy living and disease prevention through to diagnosis, treatment, and home-based care, for Philips' global product lines. Growth here was modest in FY25 (+2.4%), but this is consistently the highest-margin segment in the portfolio, generating ₹223.8 crore of segment profit — effectively a stable, annuity-like earnings base underpinning the rest of the business. Personal Health is the smallest segment by revenue — roughly 12.5% of sales at ₹806.6 crore in FY25, growing 5.3% — but it is where the most interesting near-term growth story is unfolding. This is the consumer-facing arm: male grooming products under OneBlade and Philips trimmers, hair care (including the newly launched 2-in-1 Airstyler), and mother-and-child care under the Philips Avent brand, covering breast pumps and sterilizers. The segment swung from a marginal loss in FY24 to a ₹31.9 crore profit in FY25. Management describes the business as "100% digitally native," built around a heavy presence on social, digital, OTT, and connected TV, backed by celebrity partnerships with figures like Virat Kohli and Alia Bhatt, and it has picked up several industry awards for its Avent and OneBlade marketing campaigns over the past year. The Growth Ambition: ₹1,000 Crore by FY27 In an August 2026 interview with Business Standard, Smit Shukla, Country Head of Philips Personal Health for the India subcontinent, laid out a specific target: the Personal Health segment is expected to cross ₹1,000 crore in revenue by financial year 2026-27. That would require the segment to grow considerably faster than its recent run-rate of roughly 5-6% annually — a meaningful acceleration from where FY25 left off. Shukla's stated rationale rests on a few pillars. India's personal-care market itself is estimated to be growing at around 6.5% annually, and Philips' personal health business, he says, is running at roughly twice that pace. He frames India as one of the most critical markets globally for personal health, pointing to favorable demographics — a large and growing population of young consumers entering the category — as a structural tailwind, with the segment still viewed as significantly underpenetrated relative to its potential. The channel story is arguably the more concrete part of the growth plan. Quick commerce, which Shukla says was in the "low single digits" of the Personal Health business just 18 months ago, is expected to contribute 20% of the segment's revenue by the end of FY27. Online channels overall already make up 70-75% of total segment sales, making it by far the fastest-growing part of the business — a sharp departure from the tra