Videocon eyes doubling of AC market share

Home appliances maker Videocon today said it is looking to more than double its market share to 12 per cent in the AC segment by the end of 2015.
"We are looking at increasing our AC sales by 2.5 times and expanding our distribution penetration accordingly," Sanjeev Bakshi, country head-AC at Videocon, told reporters.
"We are doubling our selling points to 9,500 by end of the fiscal from 4,500 presently," he added.
The company, which launched today a new range of ACs, is also setting up a new manufacturing facility in Madurai, Tamil Nadu, which is the second largest market for them after Maharashtra.

"The Madurai facility will be operational by the end of 2015," Bakshi said , adding besides ACs the facility will also manufacture televisions, refrigerators, and mobile phones going forward.
"We will be increasing our total production capacity to six lakh ACs this fiscal," he said

The production capacity at Aurangabad in Maharashtra will be doubled to four lakh AC units from 2.5 lakh AC units and Madurai will have a production of two lakh ACs, he added.
"We have 65 new AC models from 36 last year. All this will help us realise our target," he said.
When asked about e-retailing of ACs, Bakshi said the company does not have any partnerships as of now.

"Videocon will continue to rely on traditional sales channels primarily," he said.
"ACs are very logistic intensive and this is the largest challenge in last mile delivery," he added.
The AC market grew by about 15 percent last year across India and the size of the market is expected to go up from 35 lakh ACs sold last year to 40 lakh ACs, Bakshi said.
Voltas is currently the market leader, with about 16 per cent of the market share, followed by LG, Samsung and Videocon.