The country’s largest white goods maker, LG Electronics’ India sales growth tapered down last fiscal to 4 per cent, growing below the market rate which industry executives attributed to increased competition from newer brands, shying away from online sales and failure to revive smartphone business.
As per the company’s disclosures to the Registrar of Companies, LG India’s gross revenue touched Rs 144.48 billion in 2015-16 compared with Rs 139.37 billion the year earlier.
The current fiscal may continue to be difficult for the Korean major with the company yet to make any major breakthrough in the e-commerce and smartphone markets, and demonetization likely to impact sales for a couple of months.
LG Electronics India, however, notified that the company has grown sales at double digit pace this fiscal and the impact of demonetization will only be a short term phenomenon. A company spokesperson said smartphone is indeed an important segment where the company has recently started manufacturing its handsets in India to localize them.
LG India’s low growth rate last fiscal comes at a time when the home appliances market grew by around 8per cent, and the television market grew by 18 per cent.
The company has recently created a team to tap e-commerce business and developing separate models, while it plans to make in-roads into newer areas like water and air purifiers and extend its market share in LED televisions. This year, LG overtook Sony for the second slot in LED televisions after Samsung.
By Baishakhi Dutta
