We are growing faster than the market itself: Gunjan Srivastava

Growing prospects for household appliance market in tier II and III cities with elevating living standards across towns in the country has encouraged European home appliance brands Bosch and Siemens Home Appliances to tap the aspiring buyers by increasing the store count from 62 to 200 through franchising across the country in the next 2-3 years. While targeting to clock double digit revenue in the coming years with focus on offering best consumer experience, Gunjan Srivastava, MD & CEO, BSH Household Appliances Manufacturing Pvt. Ltd. spoke to Indianretailer.com

With efforts of strengthening the presence in India what are your retail expansion plans?
We have a clear strategy of expanding our exclusive brand stores for both Bosch and Siemens from 62 to 200 in the next 2-3 years across all metros. We currently have brand stores which are franchised as they become a part of the brand. In terms of ROI, this will depend from franchise to franchise.
The service facilities of the brand are currently available in 200 cities, which will scale up to 300 cities in future. We will make necessary investments to expand our footprint and retail presence.

Which cities are you planning to tap with your EBOs?
For our mass brand Bosch, we are looking at tier I to III cities like Madurai, Trichy along with mini and metro cities. For Siemens, we are predominantly focusing on metro cities to tap the aspiration buyers.

How are you focusing on better consumer experience in your stores? 
We thrive to provide the best possible experience through our live demos of our appliances by providing experience of using the appliance in our brand stores. In the multi brand stores we have Brand Promoters; we provide extensive training to our sale force and store employees, so that they can further educate visiting consumers adequately about product features, USP’s etc.
Along with this we try and provide innovation point of sales and interactive user experience displays. We conduct many experiential concepts for products like demo dishwashers, washing machine, freshness zones for refrigerators and live cooking demos for cooking appliances

What is your e-commerce presence and what are the plans of widening it?
We are currently present on few leading e-commerce sites and in the process of evaluating the sales from these platforms and plan on expanding in the next 6-12 months. Also, as of now we are not planning to launch our own eCommerce portal in India.

How much does EBOs and e-commerce contribute to your total revenue?
The EBOs contribute to about 15-20 percent of our total revenue as we focus on providing experience to our consumers. The revenue from the eCommerce portals is almost negligible currently.

How do you observe the growing demand for BSH products across metros to tier III cities? |There is a considerable growth in the demand of BSH appliances across cities. But, we generally have seen growth being more in the tier II and III cities as they are looking at upgrading their lifestyle and comfort extensively. In the recent past, Southern markets have shown increased interest and demand for washing machines and dishwashers. We have a growing demand in the North as well.

What will you say regarding the competition in the market and what is your market share?
The home appliance market in India is highly competitive with many international and domestic players actively expanding their presence in the category. The cooling and laundry categories are the most competitive of all. Washing machine category is growing by 15 percent, which is one of the fastest growing sectors. The company is growing faster than the market itself. The cooking category is receiving immense acceptance in the Built in Category and hence we are looking at growing further.

What is the contribution of Indian market to your global revenue?
The contribution of the Indian Market is rather small as of now. We are aiming to grow considerably in the next 10 years and are looking at increasing the contribution to the global market. We have a state of the art manufacturing unit in Chennai, which mainly manufactures Washing Machines supporting the ‘Make in India’ campaign.

What are your future strategies for the India market?
Clear strategy for the company is to expand the brand stores for both Bosch and Siemens. Further, we want to strengthen our foothold by providing perfect solutions for our consumers. We also plan on increasing our market share in the dish care category, as we have introduced many special features, especially for the Indian market.

What is your current revenue and what is the future projection?
We are looking at double digit revenue in the coming few years. By 2025, we plan to become one of the leading brands with at least 10 percent market share, backed by innovative and technologically superior products suited to the requirements of the Indian customers.

According to you what is the market size of home appliances in India?
The size of the appliances market was about 4.5 million euros at the end of 2015. The market is expected to increases at the rate of 10 percent yearly and is estimated to double in the next 10 years.