Carrier Plans To Increase Market Share By 30%

Carrier Aircon, a 51 per cent-owned subsidiary of $30 billion US major United Technologies, plans to increase its market share in air-conditioners significantly from the current level of 30 per cent.

`With the launch of the new Global Series range, Carrier hopes to address every price segment in the segment and this should enable us to keep our leadership position in the industry," said Anil K Srivastava, managing director of the company.

Meanwhile, Carrier is likely to register a five per cent dip in turnover this fiscal against Rs 400 crore in 1998-99, due to decreased production and price reduction effected to beat stiff competition from new multinational entrants.

 

"Our production was down by 30 per cent for three months last year due to labour unrest. We produced 4,000 lesser units of window ACs each of these three months," managing director of Carrier Aircon Anil K Srivastava said. Also, the company slashed prices across all its models by up to 12 per cent to meet stiff competition from new entrants such as LG Electronics, National and Samsung, he said.

"These players launched aesthetically superior models at lower prices and we had to match their prices even though our products were quality-wise superior," Srivastava said.

The company had been negotiating a long-term agreement under which 174 employees were retrenched last year, and the production loss was a result of labour unrest at the time of signing the agreement.

"We had to pay Rs 2.2 crore as compensation for retrenching these people and this has definitely affected our bottomline," he said.

In line with its expansion plans, Carrier has invested Rs 12 crore in setting up its second manufacturing plant at Daman for window

air conditioners with an installed capacity of 1.5 lakh units per annum.

"This plant has been set up so that we can expand upon our compressor and chiller manufacturing at the Gurgaon plant," Srivastava said adding an incremental investment of Rs 12 crore has been made at Gurgaon.