Eveready in on the radar of investors after it unveiled plans to enter the electrical appliances space and announced an aggressive expansion plan.

Speaking to Bloomberg TV India, Eveready Industries India Ltd Managing Director Amritanshu Khaitan said there is enough scope for the company to scale up its operation in the home appliance and lighting segments, which are 10 times the size of the battery segment. Starting with fans, the company aims to roll out a mixer-grinder, toaster, iron and other home appliance products that can be sold in rural India through its one-million-strong distribution network.

Eveready has been aggressively expanding in various business segments — from packaged tea to now home appliances. Give us a sense of your aggressive foray into the home appliances segment. Where do you see yourself in the home appliances business in the medium term?

Eveready is an iconic brand and one of the top 100 brands in the country. And we believe we can extend the brand into many more products, especially in the home appliance space, where the brand fit has been very good. We successfully extended the brand into LEDs last year and we are now taking the step for going into a higher value range of products through home appliances. The home appliances itself is a ₹15,000-crore category growing in double digits. So we feel that if we can capture 3-4 per cent and up to 5 per cent of the market share in the next four-five years, it will create a strong vertical for the company.

Give us an idea of which of the products you will be launching and what will be your focus area.

For the launch period, obviously fans will play an important role because of the season time. We are also coming with a range of products from mixer-grinder, to toaster to iron — products that can be sold in rural India through our extensive distribution network. We will also focus on e-commerce to sell higher value products.

What is the overall strategy for Eveready going forward?

Our company has two key strengths — one is obviously the brand, and second is the distribution network. If you look at the brand, in the next three-four years we do want to extend the brand and scale up the turnover through entry into lighting and other appliances, and also concentrate on the profitable business of batteries and flashlights. When it comes to distribution, since we have a direct reach of about a million outlets, we want to push through more products and that’s where packaged products will play an important role. We will be looking at opportunities where we could distribute other company’s products or brands that want to leverage our distribution network. That is more of a medium- to long-term play. Immediately, I think there is enough on our plate in terms of scaling up the appliances and lighting segment, which are 10 times the size of the battery segment per se. So, there is huge opportunity to scale up the business in those segments.

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