Consumer products maker, Panasonic India plans to leverage on the increasing consumer preference towards premium Air Conditioner (AC) products - mainly inverter segment - so as to strengthen its positioning in the country's AC market.

According to top company officials, Panasonic currently, has about 5 per cent market share in the overall AC market of about 50-55 lakh units in India. "We plan to increase our market share to 15 per cent in the AC segment by the year 2021. The growth will come largely from inverter segment and the premiumisation in AC purchases by the consumers," said Gaurav Sah, Business Head, AC Group, Panasonic India at the launch of a new range of AC here on Tuesday.

Sah informed that the company had sold about 1.7 lakh inverter ACs last year, which it looks at a growth of about 40 per cent this year with a sales target of about 2.40 lakh units. Overall the company plans to achieve a sales of about 3.8 lakh units for this year.

"We are seeing faster growth in the five-star category, mainly due to its energy efficiency feature. In February alone, we have sold about four times what we sold in the same month last year. This shows that the trend going forward will be encouraging," said Sah.

After the imposition of Goods and Services Tax (GST) at 28 per cent, Panasonic implemented value engineering to bring down the manufacturing costs. "As a result we were able to bring down our prices by about 10 per cent," he added.

According to him, the highest selling segments are 1.5-tonne category of ACs and the ones with 3-Star rating for energy efficiency.

Panasonic has invested Rs 300 crore for its AC plant at Jhajjar in Haryana having installed capacity of about 10 lakh units per annum. The company also exports about 50,000 units to overseas markets such as South African nations and Middle East.

Related Topics
comment COMMENT NOW