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| Wipro's lighting biz to revamp strategy |
| Bibhu Ranjan Mishra / Bangalore Feb 03, 2009, 19:28 IST |
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To focus on green buildings, hospitals and pharma to beat slowdown.
Wipro Consumer Care's lighting business, which has been stagnant for the past two quarters, is revamping its marketing strategy to beat the recession. The company is planning to focus on sectors such as hospitals, pharma and green buildings, where, Wipro hopes, is a very little chance of the deferment of the projects. Traditionally, Wipro is heavily dependant on sectors such as IT/ITeS and retail which have been hit quite badly in the wake of the global financial downturn.
"During the third quarter, most of our businesses including consumer care, furniture, Unza reported outstanding growth. However, the lighting business had a slower growth for the second quarter in a row as the most real estate projects are on hold owing to the global slowdown. We expect the demand from this sector to be slower in coming days, and thus shifting our focus on the projects which are not on hold," Vineet Agrawal, president, Wipro Consumer Care and Lighting (WCCL) said.
Wipro already has emerged to be one of the strong players in the green building segment by executing 17 out of the 26 certified green buildings in operations so far, the recent one being Microsoft's gold-certified green building in Hyderabad. Going forward, the company expects to focus on this segment quite strongly, apart from hospitals and pharmaceutical sectors.
Recently, Wipro has also announced to launch green practice under the aegis of Wipro Infrastructure Engineering, to help companies in coming energy efficient and reduce their carbon footprints. The company's green IT offerings include consulting, green data centres, carbon accounting, paperless offices and freight management solutions.
Wipro has given a proposal to the organisers of Delhi Commonwealth Games to make the event energy efficient by providing its services and product offerings. Other than lighting, computers and servers, the company has also proposed to offer consulting services to make Coomnwealth Games a green event. The proposals, it is believed, has gone in well with the organisers, and the company is expected to bag the projects, high level sources in the company told Business Standard.
Lighting is the second largest revenue generating business of Wipro's consumer care business with a contribution of about 34 per cent, while the FMCG business contributes about 58 per cent to the total revenue. Furniture business, a relatively recent entrant to WCCL's bouquet of offerings, contributes close to 8 per cent for the company's total revenue.
According to Agrawal, the growth in the furniture business is primarily being driven by the launch of new range products. In the third quarter ended December 31, 2008, the furniture business grew 31 per cent year in year, which was much better than WCCL's other businesses. Wipro has also filed three patents based on their leg and beam based office furniture system which was launched in the third quarter.
In the consumer care segment, Santoor continues to be the dominant brand of WCCL with annual growth of close to 30 per cent. Santoor's personal care range offers soaps, face wash, talcum powder, handwash and body wash. The company said as they are not noticing any significant change in the consumer's buying behaviour, they are planning to expand their skin-care range in the next two quarters. The skin care products will include both lotions and creams.
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