Why is India the most important market for Nichicon’s capacitor division? Why is Nichicon very upbeat about their SLBs and film capacitors? How are they gearing to tap the full potential of the Indian market? What do they offer?
As India’s electronics manufacturing sector expands at a rapid rate, especially in automation, power grids and EV sector, uncover the huge market for passive components like capacitors and batteries with Nichicon in the energy storage segment.
India: A Key Growth Market
Nichicon is a Japanese electronics components manufacturer, headquartered in Kyoto, Japan. We have built a strong reputation in the production of Aluminium Electrolytic Capacitors and film capacitors. We have been active in India since 2012, establishing offices in Bangalore, Delhi, and Pune to support local customers.
Indian market is incredibly important for us, mainly due to its large population and booming industries entering the electronics space, particularly automotive manufacturing. India leads as the largest producer of two-wheelers and ranks third in four-wheelers, and uniquely demands capacitors that can handle EV two-wheelers, smart energy meters, solar products, and more. Success in these areas significantly contributes to our overall capacitor business growth.
How Indian Engineers Play A Role In Global Design Chain
The ecosystem for the Indian engineers plays out by dividing up the design process across different countries. For example, an application engineer in Europe develops products first, then a components engineer in India validates the components, and a procurement manager in Asia selects the supplier. This international division of the design process is becoming increasingly popular because India has substantial tech manpower. It’s now a trend for global companies to establish R&D functions in India and outsource parts of the design process. This “design win” activity in India contributes to increasing orders globally.
The Make in India and Design in India policies have opened tremendous opportunities for us. India’s unique advantage is completing the entire cycle—from design conception to mass production—within the country. This allows us to engage with engineers during the crucial design phase, ensuring our components get selected early and carried through to full-scale manufacturing. We’re capturing this opportunity by providing continuous support throughout the entire journey, from initial component validation all the way through production ramp-up.
Solutions for Modern Electronics
We focus on developing custom capacitor lineups to meet the specific needs of Indian applications such as EVs and smart electronics. By understanding the local demands, products are developed. For instance, capacitors for EVs must withstand vibration and deliver high ripple current, while those for smart meters require reliable backup power under Indian specific temperature fluctuations.
India’s EV and smart meter manufacturers face a critical challenge: conventional batteries can’t handle 50°C temperatures and daily cycling, while traditional film capacitors have 2-3 year lead times that stall product launch. Our Film capacitors “EM series” address these problems.
Since establishing a local presence, Nichicon has expanded beyond aluminium electrolytic capacitors into film capacitors and small lithium titanate rechargeable batteries known as SLBs. Our sales team is growing steadily to provide better technical support.
Product Overview
The products they have showcased at the event
- SLB series
- Film capacitors “EM series”
These two products are for two different market segments.
- Small Lithium Titanate Rechargeable batteries (SLB) are developed for IoT devices, wearables, and energy harvesting applications because of their higher power density characteristics. Film capacitors “EM series”, on the other hand, are used especially in EVs for their compact and high ripple current compared to Aluminium Electrolytic Capacitors.
Small Lithium Titanate rechargeable Battery (SLB) series
Core Features:
- It comes with exceptional cycle life, even after 25,000 charge/discharge cycles, it maintains 80% capacity.
- Ultra-Fast Charging: In just 3 minutes, it charges to approximately 80% capacity.
- It operates smoothly in a wider temperature range from -30°C to +60°C; high-temperature models are available up to +80°C, maintaining over 50% capacity even at temperature extremes.
- Low Internal Resistance: It enables efficient power delivery with minimal voltage drops. For part number SLB08115H100, as low as ESR0.2Ω at 1kHz.
The batteries passed UN38.3 transport standards and showed extremely low risk of fire or smoke even when subjected to short circuits, crushing, or nail penetration tests. From a maintenance angle, the 25,000+ cycle life means these batteries rarely need replacement, which cuts down long-term costs, especially for installations in remote areas where servicing is difficult.
Basically, if fully charged, it can provide backup power for up to three to four minutes during 20C discharge, while the other two technologies like supercapacitor or lithium ion capacitor, last only seconds to maybe a minute. For the same physical size, the capacity and energy density of our SLB is much higher.
Our SLB is used in smaller electronic devices like Samsung Galaxy S series Pen to enable care-free remote sensors inside the pen.
NOTE: If you require an evaluation board to test with different applications, Nichicon provides you with an evaluation board. Nichicon’s Field Application Engineer will be the contact person.
For additional details about SLB Series batteries, click here
Film capacitors “EM series”
In India currently the EV segment is currently growing very rapidly. We, as a capacitor manufacturer, even though we are a passive component, internally we are developing advanced products as well. What we can see in the trend of EV requirements is that they want very high capacity, high ripple current, but in a very compact case size.
Key Features:
- This series capacitor offers a Modular design, multiple of these units can connect in series or parallel to achieve customer required capacitance and ripple current.
- Our Film capacitors “EM series” is compact and Cost-Effective, yet perform like the bulky capacitors. It delivers 1,000V or more high-voltage performance in smaller footprints at lower costs than bulky film capacitors.
- AEC-Q200 Automotive Qualified: Meets automotive standards for vibration and wide temperature range.
Instead of using this large single film capacitor, we provide these smaller Film capacitors. These smaller film capacitors can be used in multiple pieces, either in series or parallel connection, to achieve the same performance. This gives them a modular and flexible design as per their requirements, and making it much faster to produce and procure.
We are planning mass production for these starting from 2026. Samples are already available – currently, we supply samples to a few customers for testing, but for mass production quantities, you need to wait until 2026.
For additional information about the EM Series Film capacitors, click here.
For further details, visit the company’s official website
To discover more about Nichicon Electronics India’s strategy and innovative product portfolio, watch the full video from this link.
