Affected by the cash crunch following demonetisation, BSH Household Appliances, part of Germany's diversified group Bosch, has witnessed a 15-25 per cent drop in sales, a top company official said.
"It (demonetisation) has had an impact in the last 10 weeks and that has been a reduction in sales from our stores to the end user. It was somewhere between 15-25 per cent in the last two months," BSH Household Appliances Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Gunjan Srivastava told PTI.
The government on November 8 banned the old Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 notes worth around Rs 20.51 trillion to control black money and counterfeit currency.
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Noting that it is a temporary blip, Srivastava said he expects the situation to normalise by March.
"We see this as a temporary blip till the monetary situation corrects itself and then the growth will be back to normal. The bigger cities are recovering faster but in smaller cities we still see an impact of 15-25 per cent. My anticipation is by March we should be back to normal," he said.
For the last couple of years, BSH Household Appliances has been growing at 40-50 per cent year on year, and it aims to enter new categories and segments over the next two years.
"We will enter new categories and we will also expand into newer segments of the categories in which we are already present," he said.
The company, which sells its products through e-commerce portals like Amazon, Flipkart and Pepperfry, said the share of online sales is likely to increase to double digits in the next three to four years.
"The digital aspect of consumers is increasing. E-commerce is part of the purchase cycle and purchase behaviour of the consumer. The customer is buying online or is doing research or comparing online.
"Currently the contribution is small in low single digit but we do see it increasing because of the trend which we see picking up and in the coming years, in three to four years, it might be in double digits," he said.
It also has 75 branded stores and plans to take the number to 200 in the next two or three years.
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