Blue Star to integrate IoT for its entire product range

At a time when everyone is buzzing about Internet of Things (IoT) and as it has already made its presence felt, air-conditioning (AC) company Blue Star is all set to integrate this concept in all of its products. With this integration Blue Star is targeting to become the market leader in Japanese-dominated inverter AC segment.

According to the plan of action set by the company, it will integrate 75 per cent of its product portfolio in line with the concept, while the entire integration will be over by 2020.

Company's executive director B Thaigarajan said that realising the changing scenario in cooling needs of consumers, the company has moved towards this integration, According to him enabling the ACs controls like cooling mode, air-flow, on-off mechanism and other aspects from a smartphone app via Wi-Fi makes an AC "smart" in nature.

As per Thaigarajan, presently, the company is charging an extra Rs 2,500 per AC to ensure IoT compatibility, which is supposed to come down in the coming years.This price will be down by at least 50 per cent in the coming year and will eventually become negligible.

MIRC Electronics, which owns the Ondia brand of ACs has recently launched the IoT-enabled models which has been priced nearly five per cent higher than its normal ACs.

In the ongoing fiscal year, Blue Star has been focusing on strengthening its market share in northern India at 7.5 per cent, and is targeting a 20 per cent market share in the inverter AC segment in the years ahead. Blue Star is targeting to grow 25 per cent nationally and increase its market share pan-India to 12 per cent.

During the third quarter of the current fiscal year, while having a market share in excess of 10.5 per cent, the brand had reported an increase of 15 per cent in its total income at Rs 685.76 crore, while operating profit jumped by 217.65 per cent to touch 27.89 crore.

According to the official, Indian AC market will grow at a rate of 15 per cent in the days ahead

Besides, Thaigarajan expects Blue Star's online sales to rise substantially by 2020 to account for 50 per cent of its total sales. As per him, price dichotomy (prevalent now) between online and physical sales will go away eventually.