Avneet Singh Marwah – CEO, Super Plastronics

Almost everyone remembers Kodak, it is one of the oldest companies which dominated 90 per cent of the photographic film, and 85 per cent of the camera market in India. Everyone who knows the brand has a story about their own “Kodak Moments” captured by Kodak cameras. But Kodak is not just limited to cameras now. Over the last decade, the company saw a huge downfall, but it got back on its feet with R&D focusing on the future of digital imaging. This was the time when Delhi-based firm Super Plastronics Pvt. Ltd got the Kodak Eastman to India once again. During an exclusive visit to Super Plastronics manufacturing site in Noida, Avneet Singh Marwah, CEO of Super Plastronics, with Pahi Mehra recalls his journey with Kodak and how this SPPL is standing out with Kodak LED TVS consumer base in India

Please tell us about your journey, and how did you become a Kodak Eastman’s brand licensee? We are about 35-year-old company and we started with CRT TV in the 90s, then came black & white and then color so you can say that we have the DNA of TV on our whole board.

The big transformation was from CRT to LCD and market was not so conducive, I had the idea that we have so many offices and service center across India so we thought we need a brand that had global presence,

a lot of searches went on and we came to find Kodak, it had its word in India for a lot of time as people were associated with it for some of the other digital purposes.

It took us almost 1.5 years to get Kodak in India; our approach was that customers would associate with it because Kodak in previous years was known to the public for its varied digital services.

When did your partnership with Kodak start? It started in 2016 and then we shifted to

online, gradually to Amazon and Flipkart, since then Flipkart has been our strategic partner.

So, how did this expansion helped in growing SPPL? We wanted a brand that can give growth of 100%. We had three domestic brands but that was not giving growth. India is a market where the brand does matter.

In 2015, the trend of affordable TVS started in India, before that customer

focused on 3-4 brands, and it was at that moment when we thought it would be the right time for the launch.

Can you tell us the name of domestic brands you are associated with? The domestic brands we were associated with are Beltek and SVL.

What were the hurdles you have to overcome in order to set up a consumer base for Kodak TVS in India? The very first hurdle was that whether we will get the acceptability or not, will customers accept this affordable TV but now things have changed, India has changed from DDLJ to Article 15.

Things that worked 5 or 10 years back will not work today, India is a rapidly growing market and you have to cope up with it.

Our other hurdles were logistics, movement, and affordability, but we made our way till here.

You are also a brand licensee for French Television brand, Thomson, so what kind of market shares does your company hold currently? About 5.5% something but the target for 2022 is 7%.

What do you think about the current market scenario of the consumer electronics industry? There is a slowdown in the offline market as compared to online, corrective measures are required from the government policy side and partner’s side, one needs to play volumes and decrease their margin.

If the offline market has to get going then there is a need to change the selling strategy. Twists and turns have to be brought in selling strategy. Apart from this as far as government policies are concerned, the GST is 28%, the highest in the world and if we combine all direct and indirect taxes it comes to 48%. So I think 18% of taxation for TV will bring a big boom in consumer electronics.

How are you helping with the initiative like “Make in India”? We are contributing for last 35 years, we always support Make In India, the best thing about this initiative is to give jobs directly or indirectly and SPPL has given 2000 jobs directly or indirectly in last 4 years, we completely endorse the initiative but I think it will take next 10 years for Make In India to be in complete form.

So you assemble most of your products here? The reason for doing so is that the raw material used can’t be generated here as there is no factory as per the required demand, so most of the part has to come from out of India.

You have recently launched XPRO series of 4K LED TV, how was the response? We have got a fantastic response, it’s great, seeing the budget size for the last 3 years we have bagged the budget award, it’s like we keep experimenting.

So, apart from the sales, will you be rolling out any additional discounts on the festive season? Buy for 43 and get 55, other surprises are also there in the bucket. We are giving the correct prices not the cheap prices. And to Target for online sales is that every 58th TV sold this Diwali will be from SPPL, as per a survey by Amazon and Flipkart.

What kind of sales you are expecting? SPPL is targeting about 1.5 – 2 lakh panels this festive season.

We see a lot of brands are putting their steps in the Television sector like One Plus and Xiaomi, so how are you dealing with the competition? When we launched Kodak, Leko was there but now it completely vanished. We really appreciate the competition, this helps us to create our own market, but their competition is with big brands but they create a market for us too it would be we giving competition to them rather than they give us, it’s like what they launch in 60K we do the same in 40K.

What are your market share targets for the future? When we started Kodak, we did the following things gradually:

• Opened an automatic line

• Did investment of 150 crore

• One more plant is ready for auto

• Big announcement post-diwali

Today we have a 5.5 per cent market share but as I said our target is 7 per cent.

When did you set up this manufacturing site in Noida and how was the experience? We set up this manufacturing site in 1997. We had 3 factories, before that we had 5 factories in Okhla, Delhi but due to slowdown we moved here in Noida.

Now we have an adjacent plant next to Aqua metro line and more expansion would be there in the coming years.

Any big hurdles you faced from the government? There are no big hurdles from the government in terms of setting up the factory but the hurdle comes after 2 years. Demonetisation, GST, you don’t feel free it keeps you busy.

Are you working on any new generation technique for your upcoming TVS like Artificial Intelligence? We have the technology but not able to launch it as of now, will definitely do it in the future. ■