After taking over as managing director and chief executive officer of Bosch and Siemens Home Appliances Manufacturing Pvt Ltd (BSH) in June 2014, Gunjan Srivastava has been responsible for running the business in India and other South Asian markets. In conversation with Ashish K Tiwari, he speaks about the brands, product range, positioning and future plans.

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Could you give us a brief overview of the parent company as well as the India unit?

Globally, BSH has more than $12 billion in turnover and is number two in the world and number one in the Europe in home appliances. The company operates in five key categories -- home appliances with cooling products, washing, cooking, dish care and consumer products or small appliances. The company was created as a joint venture between Bosch and Siemens almost half a century ago. Beginning of last year i.e. January 2015, Siemens sold its shares to Bosch and we are now a 100% Bosch-owned company. BSH is a separate organisation in itself and so is BSH India and owned completely by BSH Germany, which in turn is owned by Bosch. In India, there is no relationship as such between BSH and Bosch, but we certainly collaborate wherever we can.

How many brands do you have under the BSH operations in India? What's the brand strategy and positioning like?

We have quite a few brands globally, but they are still not available here. We only have two main brands being sold in India i.e. Bosch and Siemens. They are also positioned differently to target different segments of the market. Siemens is the more premium and exclusive brand targeting consumers in the upper and high end of the market who live a particular lifestyle and are fascinated about built-in and technologically advanced products. As for Bosch, it's positioned in the mass premium category that's basically the middle segment of the market and competes with all the big brands. While we will offer a full basket restrictive but global product range under Siemens banner in India, the plan going forward is to introduce products across the five categories under the Bosch brand as mass-premium is the segment we are and will be focusing on in the years to come. So the Siemens range will all be imported, the Bosch range will be based on local insights and made for India products.

But brand visibility seems to be an area of concern…

There are some people who know Bosch has home appliances but there is a large percentage that's not aware. So yes, we will be working on creating brand visibility, telling stories around the brand, the kind of problems our product range can solve and why people need to buy Bosch products. That's certainly a crucial part of our strategy in India.

What kind of revenues has the company clocked in the recent past?

I am not authorised to share top-line numbers but we have been growing almost 40-50% year on year. Last year, we grew 65% in local currency terms and this year we are also targeting another 50% growth. Over the next 5-10 years we will be chasing 35-40% growth annually. This will happen on the back of two things, first is we are gaining market share in existing categories quite rapidly and secondly we are expanding in other markets; so that will contribute to growth as well. The bigger part of the growth, however, will come from entering newer categories. For example, we have been only present in the very high end 400-litre segment of refrigerators and are now in the process of launching a new range that's been designed for India. These will be in the 290 to 350 capacity range, offering very unique benefits and priced starting Rs 34,000 onwards.

You said about gaining market share in existing categories. Can you please quantify it?

I can give you market share data wherever we have audited numbers from GFK. So in front-load washing machines we had low single-digit market share a few years ago but now we in double-digits touching 15% and above. As far as the refrigeration category is concerned, we have just entered the space, so hardly any presence now. But the ambition is to have double-digit market share in this category as well in two years. In other categories like dish-washers, built-in cooking, etc. there is no reliable data. While we have internal estimates we'd prefer not to talk about it because someone else will; then say we only have so much market share and we have no way to dispute any number.

What is BSH's business outlook for the Indian market?

Our foray into the Indian market happened in 2010 so we are a relatively young company compared to the well-entrenched competition that's been in India for nearly 20-25 years now. We believe there is a huge scope for our brands and products primarily because it's a large market growing at 8-10% annually. Our estimate is the market will continue to grow like this for the next 10-20 year primarily because of low penetration of all the appliances that we operate in. Also, we feel that as Bosch and Siemens, we will be able to add something of value to Indian consumers and solve some of the problems they are facing in the day-to-day life. And being the only German-European brand we enjoy a certain kind of market reputation that even our competition doesn't despite operating since over two decades. In the next 5-10 years, we will establish BSH as a dominant player in the industry with double digit market share in household appliances.

What strategies will be adopted to achieve this?

First and foremost is products. Our strategy is not to bring global products into India just like that. It likely happen under the Siemens brand but the bulk of our business will be from Bosh-branded products. So we will work on creating India specific products and to do that we have investing a lot in terms of understanding consumer needs and then putting it back into our development projects. We are also developing research and development (R&D) teams within the country so that they are closer and can collaborate with our global centres to create products. We will launch products that have German engineering but are local in terms of needs and problems they solve. We have already invested in a manufacturing unit that is currently making washing machines and we will gradually make other products as well.

Distribution and after-sales services network are very key for your business. What's your footprint at present?

We are already present in around 1,500 stores across 200 cities in India. But that's still small given the size of market we are looking at. So enhancing the distribution network is another focus area. Our short to mid-term objective is to take it to about 300 cities in the next three years with the launch of new products. As for customer service, we are already present in over 300 cities just to ensure that if a customer buys any of our products in a big city and then relocates to a small city, then we are still able to offer him/her after-sales service support for 10 years from the time a particular product has been bought. This network will be expanded as well as we continue to launch new products in the market.