Intex steps up focus on consumer durables as competition hots up in the smartphone market

Home-grown mobile phone and IT peripheral maker, Intex Technologies will look to strengthen its consumer durables business.

The company has already expanded its offerings to include refrigerators and fully automatic washing machines to add to it existing portfolio of LED TVs and air purifiers.

The Delhi-based company made a name for itself in the IT peripherals market.

And, stuck gold when it diversified into smart-phone making. It forayed into consumer durables with LED TVs.

Sources indicate that Intex’s focus on consumer durables is a part of its strategy to de-risk the mobile phone business (which has seen steep competition from mostly Chinese brands) as well as explore faster growth avenues.

According to Nidhi Markanday, Director & Business Head, Consumer Durable and IT peripherals, the focus on consumer durables was a conscious decision some three years back. It had nothing to do with competition in the smartphone business.

“The rise in Chinese brands happened a year back. But, we decided to get serious about the consumer durable business three years back,” she told BusinessLine during an interview.

The company will look to leverage the “Intex” brand and target Tier-II towns and onwards. Pricing will be skewed towards the affordable segment. Focus on the upmarket/urban customer will come in a little later. It will look to compete with “all Indian brands” in these markets first.

“We will look to be present in Tier 2 and onwards markets. But, this does not mean we will completely over-look the Tier-I segment,” Markanday pointed out.

Intex already has a brand recall in select markets, with it being the market leader in speakers, UPS and power banks. It also has a 5-6 per cent market share in the LED TV space. Of the ₹6,213 crore that Intex reported last fiscal, consumer durables were approx 10 per cent or ₹600 crore business for the company.

This number is expected to go up to 17-18 per cent by the end of this fiscal. South and western India contribute 32 per cent each of the consumer durables business; followed by North and East.

(Mobiles contribute 84 per cent of its total revenue; while IT peripherals account 6 per cent.)

According to Markanday, around ₹1,500 crore is being invested for a new factory at Kasna (Greater Noida), Uttar Pradesh. A part of the factory will be used for making consumer durable offerings; apart from mobile phone making and IT peripherals.

Intex’s other existing units include one at Jammu for manufacturing speakers (16,000,000 a year); while the one in Baddi, Himachal Pradesh, manufactures LEDs, mobile phone chargers and mobile batteries.

It is also making washing machines. In Noida, it has three units which are into mobile phone making.

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