Despite the Covid-19 pandemic crisis, leading consumer products companies believe that demand trends in non-metro cities remain positive and could fuel economic recovery in the country.

Speaking at a webinar, Anil Rai Gupta, CMD, Havells India said, “ I believe that May and June have shown the industry that recovery could be faster than what people were expecting it to be in the month of March and April. So going forward we should fulfil what customers need, ensure availability and accessibility of our products, these will be the key factors for any company for the next 5 to 6 months.”

Vineet Agarwal, MD, Transport Corporation of India Ltd and Abhishek Somany, MD, Somany Ceramics were other participants at the webinar organised by Workplace Trends India founder Tushar Mittal. Rajiv Memani, Chairman and Regional Managing Partner, EY India was moderating the panel discussion.

Somany added, “We moved our focus from tier-1 towns to tier 3, tier 4 towns, not even tier-2 towns, so much so that even pre lockdown 70 per cent to 72 per cent of our sales were coming from tier 2, 3, 4 towns, and increasingly after lockdown we are seeing this focus shifting even further.”

Replying to a query on the impact on Indian companies due to the ongoing India-China tensions, EY’s Memani said, “Most Indian companies which were importing from China, I think they will now look to diversify their supply chain, either from other countries or look at local sources of manufacturing.So if we assume that the trade deficit is $30-35 billion, if $10-15 billion of that can be shifted in terms of manufacturing in India, that’s not bad.”

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