New Delhi, Dec 12: Japanese multinational, Panasonic India has decided to focus on tier II and tier III markets in India by introducing customization in products for the Indian market with an aim of driving top-line this year to come from these markets.
The company has set target to make display category Rs 200 crore in FY 2014, said senior official of the company.
The company wants to position its portable professional projectors to these markets, which would later pave the way for its high end projectors and LED displays.
Vineet Mahajan, general manager, display products, systems solution display at Panasonic India said, “In the last two years, we have been modified or customized our projectors range to suit the Indian geography and Indian consumers’ needs. So far we are well covered in major metros, but with having wider range of portable projectors, we are all geared up to roll out entry level range of projectors in tier II and III cities like Lucknow, Kanpur, Dehradun, Jaipur, Chandigarh, Patna, Guwahati, Ranchi, Bubneshwar, Pune, Nagpur and Goa.”
In a country where smaller cities may contribute equally in terms of sales compared to metros why does the company want to concentrate only on tier II and III cities?
“Our study on the changing product buying trends and complementing company strategy has been interesting. So while Panasonic is developing products which are suitable for tier II markets, it is also enlarging its base in bigger cities which can absorb advanced top-end projectors, such as mini home cinema, cinema projectors,” said Mahajan.
“With our focus moving towards these new cities, we are also planning to widen our channel networks. Currently we have 16 state wise distributor and 500 dealers across India for our projectors. Having said so we are also recruiting new dealers,” he added.
Apart from projectors, Panasonic also has wide product portfolio of plasma and LED large format display. The company has been growing this line of business in the government and corporate space. It is also seeing traction coming up from modernization of airport, metro projects, requirement in large auditorium, board room meetings and many others opportunities.
Mahajan added, “We have broad portfolio of large format display, now we see there is demand for LED interactive display and we are aggressively getting into this new market.”
In the last financial year, Panasonic sold close to 20,000 projectors units. This year, it has set a target of 28,000 units, despite the fact that the projector market had decelerated by 10-12 percent.
“We are investing a lot in portable projectors. Overall, we have 63 models of projectors ranging from 28 in portable below 3500 Lumens, 25 projectors in mid-range (3500 -8000 Lumens) and rest are high end projectors, above 8,000-25,000 Lumens. With all our efforts, we want to grow our leadership position from # 4 players to #2 in the year 2014,” concluded Mahajan.