Sanyo BPL eyes top spot in slim TV segment

Sanyo BPL Private Limited, a 50-50 joint venture between Sanyo Electric Company of Japan and BPL Limited, is planning to regain its lost ground in the country's colour TV market by emerging the leader in the newly introduced slim TVs.

"We hope the slim TV share in the next couple of years to touch 30-40 per cent as the price gap between the conventional and the newly entered slim models has progressively come down," V G Rajagopalan, vice-president - marketing of Sanyo BPL, said.

The newly formed JV has embarked on a marketing campaign to this effect to achieve an over-all market share of up to 16 per cent from close to 5 per cent it has at present.

While the JV company will deal only with colour TVs, its joint venture partner Sanyo will spearhead the marketing of other electronic durables such as refrigerators, ACs and washing machines directly through its wholly-owned Indian subsidiary, Sanyo India, using the former's trade channels, according to Keiji Oshima, president and COO of Sanyo BPL.

Sanyo was also looking at a $100-million business in the Indian commercial segment in the next three-year period.

As part of the renewed plans, BPL Sanyo has launched two slim TV models and plans to add six more models by the end of the current financial year, Rajagopalan said.

Slim TVs are brought out by the traditional picture TV manufacturers in Japan to ensure the market in the face of a competition from LCD and Plasma technologies gaining popularity.

He said, the company was still keen to win a contract from the Tamil Nadu government under the free colour TV scheme even though it had failed to make it in the first phase.

According to him, the colour TV sales of BPL Sanyo went up to 30,000 units in July from around 5,000 units in the past.