Sanyo-BPL outlines new strategies

BPL to focus on mass-market products, Sanyo on high-end CTVs, home appliances

Sanyo BPL, the freshly minted 50:50 joint venture, has outlined its strategies to make its presence felt in the Indian market.

The company has said that the products will hit the market by early next month with the BPL brand solely focussing on mass-market colour televisions and the Sanyo brand focusing on high-end CTVs and other home appliances such as refrigerators, microwave ovens and air-conditioners.

A senior official of the company said that they have had detailed discussions with dealers in Bangalore and New Delhi who have expressed optimism in BPL and Sanyo brands.

"For a consumer, the BPL brand still has a good recall for its reliability, robustness and good service network. We will surely build on this equity while the Sanyo brand will focus on feature-rich technologies and high-end products which will take on the Sonys, LGs and Samsungs," he noted.

Over the next 9-12 months time, the JV firm will focus a major portion of its brand building efforts on establishing the Sanyo brand while not neglecting the BPL brand.

"We have done extensive country wide research on how to re-kindle the BPL brand to its glory and it is a good possibility that we may not take the revival route. The approach might be to just bring back the BPL product onto the shelves with a decent amount of visibility. There will not be a big-ticket splurge in advertising. Over the next year, we might be looking at a total spend of around the speculated number of Rs 60 crore," the official highlighted.

He added that Sanyo is placing a good amount of focus on the Indian operations, and has nominated the head of its North American operations Keiji Oshima as the COO of the JV, with the CEO being Ajit Nambiar. The CFO is also from Sanyo and in addition to these key positions, Sanyo has deputed key executives from the manufacturing sector.

Sanyo-BPL will be majority importing all Sanyo products from its Thailand and Vietnam manufacturing units. India's recent Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with Thailand will also help the JV in bringing products to India at competitive rates.

"The import of components to upgrade CTV models has already started and production at the Bangalore and Noida units should be starting shortly. We may not use the entire capacity to start with and options will be kept open to take up some contract manufacturing," the official added.

Commenting on how the operations will be funded, he said that Sanyo will be driving it initially but BPL is also keen not to let its 50 per cent stake to diminish.