Blue Star eyes 12.5% market share in room AC segment

Air-conditioning and commercial refrigeration major Blue Star today said it is aiming to capture a market share of 12.5 per cent in the room air conditioners market in the fiscal year 2017-18.
"The room air conditioners market is around Rs 15,000 crore and by FY17 it should be Rs 20,000 crore. It is growing at a CAGR of 20 per cent. We have a market share of 11.5 per cent and we want to achieve a market share of 12.5 per cent in FY 18," Blue Star Joint Managing Director B Thiagarajan told reporters here.
He added that the company wants to grow at a faster clip than the industry in the room AC category at 20 per cent.

ACs account for nearly a third of the company's revenues and around 52 per cent of its sales are from smaller towns.
The company plans to invest about Rs 45 crore in advertising and marketing this summer season and Rs 33 crore in new product development as well as its research and development initiatives in FY 18.
Presently, the company has nearly 85 exclusive product stores in the country and plans to increase it to 100 stores by the end of this month.
Blue Star today launched an inverter split AC, which gives cooling in decimals. The inverter AC market is 12 per cent of the 5 million unit AC industry at present and is expected to be 25 per cent of the industry by the fiscal year end.

On the impact of GST on the industry, he said, "whenever GST is rolled out there will be disruption. GST will be a painful transition and it will bring down many transactions standstill for some time. It will have some impact for the first three months. The prices may go up by 2.5 per cent.