Havells India, a leading fast-moving electrical goods and consumer durables company, is betting big on smart innovation in its products and aspires to extend its smart and Internet of Things (IoT) enabled portfolio beyond fans and water heaters to other small domestic appliances too.

Currently, Havells has smart products in fans and water heaters.

“The market (for smart products) is very small right now. But, I feel that in times to come, this is going to be the way consumers move. We are very optimistic that this is something which consumers will love and lap up. And then we will extend this to other categories, along with other models in fans…With all the data and smartphone evolution happening, one of the big things which happen is that consumers are very fast in adopting the technology. How it (smart products) builds up, how fast it builds up, what volumes it drives (etc) is something to be seen in the future. But, it's the right direction, and the right step forward,” Ravindra Singh Negi, President, Electrical Consumer Durables, Havells India Limited told BusinessLine.

Smart fans

It recently launched its first smart product in fans, Carnesia-I, dubbed an “intelligent fan” at ₹4,500. Apart from being compatible with voice-enabled devices like Alexa, Google Home and mobile applications, these fans also sense the temperature and humidity in the room and accordingly adjusts the fan speed, along with other such ‘smart’ features.

Akin to the smartphone and data revolution that happened in the country, the adoption of such smart products will also be area agnostic, and not just limited to the metros or tier-1 and tier-2 cities, said Negi.

Going forward, investments will be directed towards increasing the manufacturing capacity for fans at its plant in Haridwar, Uttarakhand by 25-30 per cent. The current production capacity of the plant is more than 10 million fans annually. Investments will also be directed towards research and development (R&D) as well in its service centres, he said.

Havells India is also looking at entering new categories. “We want to get deeper into the homes. Anything which can be connected to an electrical switch, that product is always under evaluation,” he said, without commenting further on the kind of product category it would be foraying into.

Currently present in around 1,25,000 retail outlets, the company also plans to deepen its distribution.

While the electrical consumer durables industry has been growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7 per cent in the last five years, Havells has grown at a “healthy double-digit” growth rate, and it would want to continue growing faster than the industry and consolidate its market share further, said Negi.

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