Avneet Singh Marwah – Director and CEO, Super Plastronics

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How is the business going on post the lockdown? Once the relaxations were announced during the lockdown, Kodak HD LED TV resumed its sales through Flipkart and Amazon in the orange and green zones across the country. While 80% of the demand came from cities in red zones, we saw this as an opportunity to resume supply in select areas as we had enough stock for up to a month. We, then resumed sales in red zones as per Government directives and recovered 65% of the lost sales. So far, it has been a blessing in disguise for us and from here on, we are only moving forward. Kodak TV India was the first company to start manufacturing of TVS within India.

To adhere to all safety guidelines, we installed human sanitization machines and enforced stringent social distancing norms for employees, to deliver safe and hygienic products to the consumers. Some steps include

mandating social distancing to avoid any future infection or diseases, mandatory temperature checks and use of masks and gloves while in factories.

From the entire COVID19 experience, we learnt that Television is no longer a non-essential commodity in the traditional sense. Resuming TV sales, in orange and green zones was a start of the journey to overcome the economic slump and we assure all our customers that our products follow stringent safety protocols and are hygienic.

According to you, how has the market changed during these testing times? We saw people started shifting to OTT Apps and customers who did not prefer their laptops phones etc, had no other choice but to switch. Therefore, we saw an increase in the rating of viewership’s in India, which broke all the records which resulted in greater demand for smart TVS. Due to the closure of malls and other shopping complexes, people can experience and avail amazing offers from online shopping with at just a push of a button.

Tell us about this investment in a new TV manufacturing plant?

This new Kodak TV India manufacturing plant will be used to develop and test more Android TV products within India and reduce dependency on other countries. With this, Kodak TV India aims to be one of the first Indian companies to make such a huge investment towards TV manufacturing within the country and further strengthen its position as one of the leading manufacturers in affordable smart TV segment.

What was the motive behind this investment? There are no components manufacturers in India and some critical components are available only in China. Hence, currently we are left with no other option but to source them from different countries. For a selfreliant India, we need to have a complete ecosystem for value addition. We need to have components and panel display manufacturing in India and we feel with this investment is the first step towards the future where India can be self-reliant in TV manufacturing.

What is the estimated annual turnover you are targeting with the new manufacturing plant? The facility will aim to increase its production from half million to 2 million sets a year and if everything goes well the facility will be ready to operate by the end of 2021.

What will be your targeted market share once the new plant is operational? With new plant we are targeting to achieve 8% market share in next 2 years.

With the focus only on official Android televisions for the new plant, how is the partnership with Google popping up?

Since the Google license and the new manufacturing plant, we will no longer be restricted to India. We will now be in a strategic position to target other Android TV markets across the world.

Who is investing in the new manufacturing plant? Our parent company Super Plastronics Private Limited.

Do you think this investment will be a starting point to make India the next manufacturing hub in Asia? For the last 30 years, we are manufacturing TVS in India. Currently, for LEDS, companies’ value additions are 10-15% which we are sourcing locally but the rest is imported from different parts of the world. We feel that for any manufacturing, assembly is an important first step. With the government aggressively pushing for Make in India there will be more developments on components. With these, value addition is expected to increase to up to 30%. Our new manufacturing plant will also provide employment to over 2000 people.

What are your views on Go vocal for local comment made by the PM? A great initiative taken by our Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi. As mentioned above we at Super Plastronics Private Limited have been making TVS in India for the last 30 years starting from CRT TVS to LED TVS we were complete. All Kodak televisions are completely made in India. With the Go vocal for local mission, we are hoping that the value addition of 10-15% increases to 40-50%. With the policy change, some companies are now willing to invest in India for components manufacturing. If in future, if any company is planning to invest in panel display it will become a huge advantage for our country and its eco-system.n pahi@mymobile.co.in