 "Usha stitches up a new brand story")
TTK Prestige, a leading kitchen and electric appliance maker in India, expects see a huge opportunity in the rural market this year as the emphasis on infrastructure would mean more houses with kitchens that need appliances.
“People in rural areas will be the ones with the disposable income. The rabi crops have had a great yield. The growth rate has also been revised. This will all lead to a better rural growth for us,” said Chandru Karlo, managing director at TTK Prestige, in an interview. “Rural is big this year.”
Karlo says with the announcement of various schemes in the infrastructure sector, there will be new homes in the rural areas leading to more kitchens which would work in favour of the company.
In the last quarter, in the month of November the company’s sales went down by 35 per cent due to demonetisation.
“While Diwali was over in October, the next two months are huge for us mainly because it is the wedding season specially in the north. We lost a lot in that, November we went down by 35 per cent, which caught up in December and by January we started seeing growth again. However, going further we see absolutely no problems because it is only people who are non-compliant who are not spending,”said Karlo.
The three segments that the company is working on — electric appliances, pots and pans for kitchens and the cleaning solutions segment introduced last year — are seeing good traction from users. The pots and pans business should amount for 52 per cent of the revenue this year followed by 48 per cent by electric appliances. Cleaning solutions is expected to be around three per cent, as it is fairly new segment.
The next four quarters will be focused on getting new products to create a wide range in the segment. Currently, there are 15 products in the cleaning solutions segment and is expected to be 50 to 60 products by the end of the year.
“We are also looking at distributions channels. We are using our existing channels but we want to expand further and see where else the opportunity lies,“ added Karlo.
The company plans to grow to Rs 5,000 crore in revenue in the next five years. It will launch 100 products in their kitchen pots and pan segment. The company is also looking at expanding its exports to reach the Rs 5,000-crore mark for which in April last year, it acquired UK-based company Horwood Homewares.
