After being a big spender on IPL since its first season in 2007, Havells India is likely to stop investing in this tournament.
Having used the platform to build visibility for its premium range of fans and cables for the past decade, the electrical equipment company is still undecided about this season.
Saurabh Goel, Executive Vice President, said: “There is no decision taken to advertise on IPL this year. We may be the top advertisers with a ₹200-crore advertising budget in the electrical segment, but there are no plans to spend on IPL 10 as yet.”
Most consumer goods companies have become cautious after demonetisation and this could be one of the reasons to back out of expensive media properties like IPL.
Over the years, Havells has never missed a single season of the IPL and has invested as an associate sponsor and even limited itself to buying ad spots, like it did in the last season of the tournament.
Having released memorable campaigns like ‘Shock Laga’ created by Lowe Lintas during the IPL season in the past, this year the priorities of the electrical equipment manufacturer is to expand its product range and width of distribution.
“Coming from a trading background, Havells has been creating a consumer brand in categories like fans and water heaters. The challenge now is to build distribution for the consumer durable portfolio across the six categories among our 6,000 odd dealers in tier II, III and IV towns where we have about two lakh multi-brand outlets,’’ added Goel.
Havells has been steadily expanding its consumer durable portfolio from fans, water heaters, pumps, small appliances and also entered the personal grooming space.
“We want to increase our penetration as not all our SKU’s are available with our 6,000 dealers. In each category we have different competitors and there is scope to gain share to emerge as a leader in certain categories. Today, we want to grow between 20-25 per cent in the consumer durable category,’’ he added.
Havells has 11 manufacturing plants for most of these categories and has assigned a maintenance capex of ₹150 crore.
Besides, there are also plans of entering new categories like water purifiers.
“We are exploring new categories like water purifiers which are likely to get imported,” he added.