Sales of air purifiers, masks skyrocket

The market for air purifiers is confined to northern India, which contributes close to 80% of the annual sales of Rs 500 crore

Air purifiers, masks and respirators have been flying off the shelves since the capital region has come under a thick layer of smog.

Since Monday, sale of air purifiers has doubled. When air quality worsened on Tuesday, marketers saw a 250 per cent jump in sales.

The market for air purifiers is confined to northern India, which contributes close to 80 per cent of the annual sales of Rs 500 crore. For the past few years, the market has been growing by more than 50 per cent. However, growing awareness among consumers — thanks to promotional activities by all major marketers — got more consumers into retail outlets this time. According to industry estimates, the 200,000 units a year market will hit 400,000 units this year. “We have sold some 7,000 pieces in November, which is 250 per cent higher than the sales in the same period last year,” said Kishalay Ray, president, consumer electronics division, Sharp Business Systems. “During October, too, year-on-year sale was better as we saw 2,800 units fly off the shelves. But sales have skyrocketed since yesterday.” 

To cash in the growing demand for air-purifying systems, the firm had recently ventured into specialised categories, apart from car and room air-purifiers.

Other consumer durable makers were not too far behind. Korean major LG, Kent and Crompton Greaves have launched air-purifiers in the past few days. Kim-Ki Wan, managing director, LG Electronics India, said: “Air quality has been of pressing concern for consumers. Based on this insight, we have developed the latest LG air-purifiers.”

Syed Moonis Alvi, business head-purifiers, Panasonic India, said the firm has achieved sales of Rs 2 crore in October 2017, with a 20-25 per cent jump over last year. “We are targeting sales of Rs 7-8 crore till December 2017. We are at 8 per cent market share and hope to achieve 10 per cent market share by the end of 2017-18.”

Sudhir Pillai, a general manager at Honeywell Homes and Building Technologies, said: “Over the last two days, we have seen a more-than-fivefold spike in sales and 8-10-fold increase in enquires at our customer care centres. We are already selling aggressively through both online platforms as well as large and small-format retail stores.” Many shops ran out of stock of face masks and respirators. Jai Dhar Gupta, founder of Nirvana India, a seller of designer masks, said supply constraints were a concern as demand was seasonal.