BPL in the final leg of settling debt burden legacy

Enters 50th year of operations seeking to build on new promise

BPL Ltd, the Bangalore-based publicly held consumer appliances company, is in the final leg of the protracted debt settlement which has been hampering its growth. From a legacy debt of 450 crore consolidated with Deutsche Bank, BPL Ltd is now understood to have brought down the debt levels to 25 crore majorly leveraging on its vast land bank.

The company, founded by technology entrepreneur T P G Nambiar during 1963 as British Physical Laboratories, has gone through the crests and troughs and is now quietly building on the new vision to take the company forward.

From a consumer-appliances focused company, BPL, which is now in its fiftieth year of its operations is shaping its business to focus on solutions for a smart home, communication equipment for enterprises, medical equipment, power generation and also in renewable energy equipment.

After riding the consumer appliances boom during the late 1980s and 1990s, during which the company was the undisputed leader in the segment until the Korean majors descended, BPL was hit hard by various factors including high-levels of backward integration and was also felled by sharp price wars

In the market. BPL, which had a long association with Japanese major Sanyo, also tried its best to come out of the trough when it formed a joint venture for the television business, a move which fizzled out after initial success due to various factors of pricing and brand positioning and also due to Sanyo's own issues back in Japan.

The company which at its peak had annual revenues of close to 2,000 crore, now has an annual revenue run-rate of under 100 crore majorly from the healthcare equipment vertical. It has charted a Vision 2015 by which it hopes to make a mark in the verticals it has chosen to operate in.

Even as it focuses on the four segments, the company has also given the rights of its BPL brand to a company which has been authorised to sell consumer appliances such as televisions and other home appliances, through a royalty pact.