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| Edited By: Raveena Singh |Source: DNA |Updated: Mar 24, 2018, 05:47 AM IST
There are just a handful of international brands that manufacture products in India, Korean major LG being one of them. The company is to complete 20 years of operations in India. On the occasion, Ki Wan Kim, managing director, LG India, spoke to Raveena Singh on issues ranging from Goods and Services Tax (GST) implementation to the company's online marketing strategy. Excerpts from the interview:
Despite some unexpected external factors like demonetization and now GST about to be executed after the eight years of discussion, our Indian partners and customers are smartly gearing up for the change. Short-term has been shaky for the industry but it will successfully accommodate these changes in the long term.
With OLED TV, we have introduced a different category altogether, which we call the future of television. Our water purifier has a different concept; it's for the health conscious consumers and is highly hygienic with a stainless steel water tank instead of the plastic one. Even our air purifiers are eco-perfect products.
We are still checking marketability on Snapdeal, Flipkart and Amazon, and are gauging market feedback, feasibility of the consumer behaviour. We are still at the learning stage and are focusing on product differentiation to create something new. The new products will not be discount-specific, but will be something you can only buy from online stores and nowhere else. We are looking at such online-specific products as the attitude of online consumers is different and we need to come up with different value propositions. We had neglected online before but now we are working on creating a solid online platform which should be up by the end of the year.
Our trade partners have a fear of GST execution; not because of the concept but because of the lack of experience and are confused as to what to do. We will come out with a presentation to show them how to prepare and will tell them the benefits of the global standard India is headed to. In short, we will be doing the communication what government is yet to do for a soft landing into the GST regime.
Using technical innovation, we have already built ACs according to Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE) standards. The inventory of ACs without the SEER norms is almost zero and will get exhausted long before the new norms are announced.
India never was just one country for us. We are operating with autonomy in 48 branches as independent units and have 13 regional business heads under LG-1 (south and west) and LG-2 (north and east). We can have different offers for different occasions. We don't have just Diwali offers but region-specific ones. By empowering these regions, controlling less and guiding more, the corporate office is better reaching its consumers.
Conceptually, we are looking at M&As to accommodate our growing demand, but at this stage, we are still evaluating.
Only simple jobs will be confiscated by the machines. So we are already upgrading our employees' skills. Inside LG, we have a huge capacity to accommodate manpower especially in R&D, sales and marketing fields, which can't be automated.
In the last 20 years which brands have survived in the Indian market? Even many of the Japanese brands, symbols of quality haven't. The companies that keep investing in R&D and improved services are the only ones that can survive here. Micromax came, Nokia was known to be the best, even Lenovo came and went, but now there are companies like Oppo. Companies seeking big name in short time are culturally not prepared to serve India on a long-term basis. Who had anticipated Nokia would go away?
