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Panasonic India Pvt Ltd, the consumer durables arm of the Japanese major in India, witnessed a nearly 12 per cent drop in revenues in FY 2018-19.
According to the company’s regulatory filings with the Registrar of Companies (RoC) and sourced by business intelligence platform Tofler, the company’s total revenues stood at Rs 4781.80 crore in the fiscal year ended March 31, 2019 compared to Rs 5409.23 crore in the previous fiscal.
The company’s net loss widened massively to Rs 459.58 crore in FY 2018-19 from Rs 131.88 crore in FY 2017-18.
When contacted, a spokesperson for Panasonic India said, “ We have seen an impact in our profit numbers due to factors such as exchange rate impact with rupee depreciating during that period, impact of capex investments and drop in mobile phone revenue. We have shifted our mobile retail business mostly on e-commerce platform and are focusing on limited SKUs.”
The capex investment strategy including setting up a refrigerator manufacturing unit in Jhajjar, Haryana.This helped the company clock a growth of 74 per cent in the refrigerator business in FY2018-19.
“At Panasonic India, we have been making significant investments towards innovation and ‘Make in India’. To that effect, we have launched our Innovation Centre in Bangalore where we are running R&D for a new range of products due to launch next year. From localisation of products to suit the Indian market to procuring raw materials locally, we have been investing towards setting up a pipeline,” the spokesperson added.
Panasonic India has also ramped up investments to grow its B2B business. “In addition, we have also invested significantly in our B2B model, and our smart factory solutions has grown over four times. We believe this will help us boost our revenues by 50 per cent in the coming times,” the spokesperson added.
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