What’s your comment on the current status of the lighting industry in India?
Talking about the lighting business in India, the current market and the overall volume growth is temporarily slow. India is a however a highly ‘under-lit’ country so growth potential for lighting is huge. The changeover from traditional incandescent lights initially to the more energy-efficient compact fluorescent (CFL) led to a large growth in lighting and now the changeover to lightemitting diode (LED) lighting has again led to a major spurt in growth for the last 4 to 5 years. And that growth is still on because the changeover is continuing as people are taking the benefits in terms of savings in electricity bills.
When it comes to lighting business, how significant is your presence?
C&S is a late entrant to the lighting market. Though we have been in the lighting business for the last 13-14 years, but it was just another vertical under the project business where we were offering lighting as a product under that business. We have made lighting a separate business only from June 2019 and today we see substantial growth in lighting business.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of being a late entrant?
One of the advantages is that the people trust the brand ‘C&S’ for quality and we promise to continue the quality mindset in the lighting segment too. Since we are a late entrant, we are reaching a stage where we see a price stabilisation. Natural erosion of prices in each market is a common phenomenon as volume grows, but still it’s not as steep as it used to be.
At the same time, something that is against us, is that we have not been a retail facing brand thus selling a product through retailers was never our major focus earlier. We are trying to address this, and first step to that is to provide good service to our distributors. We have started working on this area and today distributors have started liking our services. The next challenge for us is to make ourselves more visible in the market and become a retail preferred brand, we are working hard towards it.
Further, since the penetration of LED technology, customers do not insist any particular brand and so specific brand loyalty is going away from the market. This is an opportunity for us to encash. However, we also see a lot of unknown players entering the market, which is a challenge. But I think in the long run, people will appreciate our brand value and we will remain a key player in the market. Of late, there are a lot of cases where companies have come and have gone away. We see C&S as a longstanding company within the market. Reliability and service are our promises to the market.
C&S Electric is India’s leading switchgear equipment anufacturer and also has been serving the nation for more than five decades. The brand is a preferred choice among the customers and is known for reliable and quality products in lighting business. We are also committed to provide best products for indoor and outdoor lighting solutions.
