Durables eye a cracking Diwali

Going by the fervour, dealers and retailers are hopeful that this season would bring in strong double-digit growth. The confidence is backed by good numbers delivered by the industry consistently in the preceding five months.

Croma, the large-format electronics chain from the House of Tata, expects a growth of over 30% this time around. Vijay Sales, one of the oldest retail chains in consumer durables, too hopes to register more than twice the growth this Diwali. Enthused by the demand across the country, Vijay Sales is also chalking out an expansion plan to mark its presence in the north through a store in Delhi.

Whirlpool India, the local arm of the world’s leading home appliances-maker hopes to rake in around Rs 600 crore this Diwali — a growth of 35% over last year. ‘‘The preceding five months has been quite good for home appliances and we expect the trend to continue during the festive season too,’’ said Whirlpool India V-P (corporate affairs & strategy) Shantanu Dasgupta.

According to George Menezes, COO, Godrej Appliances, the propellors for this year’s growth are many. One major reason is that prices of durables have not been revised upwards since October 2008, thanks to the benign commodity (mainly metals and polymers for durables) cycle. This has resulted in better-than-expected consumer demand. The excise sops rolled out by the government too have helped the industry and the end consumer.

‘‘Growth so far in the overall white goods market has been around 8-10%. We are growing at 27%,’’ said Menezes. Croma MD & CEO, Ajit Joshi, said: ‘‘While there was not much buoyancy during the shraadh period, we expect this to change during Diwali. We are expecting 30-40% growth in footfalls as compared to last Diwali.’’

New trends in consumer purchasing behaviour have emerged and are adding a new dimension to the growth story. The industry believes this Diwali will witness more purchases of technologically-driven products like playstation. The launch of Apple Nano is said to have triggered this reaction. There is also an expectation that sales of high-end LED TVs would do well. In gifting too activity seems to be better than last year. Croma has received orders from companies in the pharmaceutical, FMCG and banking arena for consumer durables for their employees, triggering a chain reaction in gifting.

In the gifting space, microwave ovens seem to have gained popularity as the cheapest product in the segment comes at a more affordable level of Rs 3,000.