Blue Star to power its entire AC range with IoT

 

With the Internet of Things (IoT) being the latest buzzword, air-conditioning (AC) company Blue Star will be integrating this concept in all of its products and is targeting to become the market leader in Japanese-dominated inverter AC segment.

Under a road map laid down 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.

"Realising the changing scenario in cooling needs of consumers, we are moving over towards this integration", the company's executive director B Thaigarajan told Business Standard.

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.

Presently, it is charging an extra Rs 2,500 per AC to ensure IoT compatability, which is poised to come down in the coming years.

"This price will be down by atleast 50 per cent in the coming year and will eventually become negligible", he said.

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.

Blue Star, in the ongoing fiscal year 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.

"We target to grow 25 per cent nationally and increase our market share pan-India to 12 per cent", he said.

During the third quarter of the current fiscal year, while having a market share in excess of 10.5 per cent, it 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.

Besides, Thaigarajan is expecting Blue Star's online sales to rise substantially by 2020 to account for 50 per cent of its total sales.

"The price dichotomy (prevalent now) between online and physical sales will go away eventually", he said.

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