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It was in the early 1980s that Eureka Forbes, a Shapoorji Pallonji group firm, entered the market with home cleaning solutions, mostly vacuum cleaners. This came before the company created and became a market leader in the water purifier segment.
Nearly four decades on, Eureka Forbes is now looking to ramp up its home cleaning solutions portfolio and do what it did in the water purifier segment. It intends to have a new range of India-specific home cleaning solutions and floor cleaning gadgets.
The new solutions will include easy to use but premium products that can mop floors without bending, clean spots on walls and so on.
According to Marzin Shroff, Managing Director and CEO, the sector was witnessing a slower off-take with annual growth varying between 5 and 8 per cent over the last few years.
Eureka Forbes, being the market leader with 80 per cent share in the ₹300-crore segment, decided to go ahead and open up the market with premium offerings targeting Indian needs.
In all, seven new products will be offered. Of this, four will be launched via the direct sales channel under Euroclean brand. The remaining three will be for the retail channel under the ‘Forbes’ brand. “We are looking at ₹100 crore turnover from these new products. Being the market leader, we are looking to create a new category here,” Shroff told BusinessLine.
The home cleaning segment, particularly the B2C (business to consumer) part, is a nearly ₹250 crore vertical for the ₹2,380-crore Mumbai-based company.
Technical tie-ups
As Shroff points out, Eureka Forbes wanted to bring in the country-specific offering for quite some time now and had been working on consumer insights and collating data in this regard. However, what it lacked was the technology to build such gadgets.
Two to three years ago, it started discussions with US-based BISSELL for ideation and development of India-specific home cleaning gadgets. BISSELL had the required specialisation. And accordingly, Eureka Forbes entered into a tech tie-up with them.
This means, products will be made as per Eureka Forbes’ requirements and imported from the US.
“These are not easy-to-replicate products. They are highly specialised offerings requiring a specific technology. Since BISSELL was a specialist in the home and floor cleaning space with the required tech, we entered into a tie-up with them,” he said.
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