The South Korean consumer electronics major Samsung aims to double its market share in India to five per cent over the next five years, and has set a turnover target of $10 billion by 2015.
J S Shin, president and chief executive officer, Samsung (south west Asia), has said that last year its Indian subsidiary, Samsung India Electronics Limited (SIEL), contributed 2.5 per cent of its global turnover which the group intends to increase to five per cent by 2015. He was here to inaugurate the company's refrigerator manufacturing facility in Chennai.
Ravinder Zutshi, deputy managing director, SIEL, said that last year the subsidiary clocked a revenue of $2.2 billion and this year it is expected to touch a revenue of $3.5 billion.
Shin said that the company began its manufacturing operations for colour television at Sriperumbudur near Chennai, in 2007. Since then, it has set up production lines for premium products like flat panel televisions, front-loading washing machines, LCD monitors and split ACs, with a total investment in the manufacturing complex totalling over $100 million.
The new plant for refrigerators will be its second refrigerator production facility in India. The facility will complement the refrigerator range produced at Noida and will cater to Samsung customers across the country.
With this, Zutshi said Samsung's total production capacity of refrigerators in India would increase to 2.6 million per annum. The company already has a facility at Noida with a capacity of 1.4 million units every year. “The new facility will help us increase our market share in frost-free refrigerators to 32 per cent from 21.3 per cent in 2010,” he said.
The company has invested $75 million in the new facility, which would employ 500 people. The company plans to roll out frost-free and direct cool models in four different capacities from the new facility initially. New models will be added over in the next few months, said Shin.
The frost-free range from the Chennai facility, called ‘Inspira’ would be in the price range of Rs 18,100 and Rs 26,000 with capacity between 255 litre and 303 l. The Pride series on the other hand would be priced in the range of Rs 9,900 to Rs 11,600 and will have a capacity of 192 litre.
Shin said that over the next five years, the company would make an additional investment of Rs 350 crore at its 80-acre Sriperumbudur facility to introduce new products and to create additional capacity.
