"Water Purifying Segment is Under Penetrated in India": Mahesh Gupta

In an exclusive interaction with IndianRetailer Dr Mahesh Gupta, founder, Kent RO talks about the expansion strategy of the brand and how they are betting big on experience centres in urban India and distribution network in tier III and IV towns for growing their retail network. Excerpts...

What percentage of the market in water purifying segment is organised? How you are planning to penetrate further?

- The overall size of the water purifier market, both organised and unorganized, is approximately Rs 6,000 crore, out of which between Rs 3500-Rs 4000 crore is the organised one. Also currently only 1 per cent of the country is covered. Hence, this is an extremely under penetrated and much needed product. Talking of metros and big cities, the penetration could be anywhere between 25-35 per cent, but if you go to smaller towns, the penetration is as low as 10 per cent or even less.

Which all retail channels i.e-MBos, EBOs or e-commerce you are betting big on? What is the percentage of sales coming through the different retail channels?

- Well, Kent has the strongest distribution network, amongst the water purifier companies in India. Kent sells its products through various distribution channels – Retail chains, Modern Trade outlets, CSD & Police canteen, corporate tie ups, Direct door to door marketing and E-commerce.

The retail presence of brand Kent is phenomenal. Kent is present at around 12,000 retail outlets Pan India and has 3000 distributors, 300 Direct Marketing executive and a sales force of around 1500 sales persons.  And most importantly Kent has a state of the art CRM based centralised call centre and Service centres which service 19,000 pin codes.

The company has also started setting up Experience Centres, where the customers can experience the innovative products. It will be a chain of 10 experience centers which will be on franchise model. The company has already opened 2 stores, one in DLF Mall of India and another in Lajpat Nagar Market. 

How bullish you are on omnichannel retailing?

- With the growing online Growing online market, omnichannel retailing is assuming importance but it is still may its way in a full throttle way. 

Do you look at dealership network to grow further in tier III and IV towns?

- Well the problem is bigger and we need to understand that first. In India there are multiple  health issue in different cites  but the route cause is contaminated water irrespective of resources even in  villages. We have done extensive surveys which has revealed that the resources of water are highly polluted like well and ponds so we have designed different product for different problems. 

Then another challenge is that there is no electricity and power available in many villages and these were the people who suffer the most with the water born diseases. Infact it is better to quit Better quit water then consume piled water. Therefore, we have worked on a product which can effectively work without any battery power and electricity but highly effective to remove bacteria and virus like cyst arsenic.  

After successfully designing these water filter the challenge was how to motivate people to use it and educate them about the need of clean water. We identified the pockets which were extremely exposed to water born diseases and joined hands with various NGos and social workers across India including art of living to educate people on the need of clean water to drink  and distributed these water filters to them.

So after having done all these exercises we are growing dealership network to grow further in tier III and IV towns.

 Which all cities you are looking to expand in the future?

- As indicated above we have Kent is present at around 12,000 retail outlets Pan India and has 3000 distributors, 300 Direct Marketing executive and a sales force of around 1500 sales persons. In fact, the company exports products to Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Kuwait, Nepal and recently entered GCC Market.  Now the company is planning to double its exports in next two years.