2024-04-24 23:27:38
New Delhi: Mukesh Ambani, the richest person in India and Asia, is preparing to create a stir in another sector after telecom and retail. His company Reliance Industries (RIL) wants to end the dominance of multinational companies in the domestic consumer electronics and home appliances market with a new made-in-India brand Wyzr. At present the market of TV, home appliances and small appliances in the country is worth Rs 1.1 lakh crore. It has 60% of LG, Samsung, Whirlpool, Haier and Daikin. Similarly, Tata Group company Voltas dominates the AC market. According to sources, Reliance is in talks with two domestic contract manufacturing companies Dixon Technologies and Mirk Electronics. Mirk Electronics is the parent company of electronic goods manufacturing company Onida. After increasing the market share of the brand, the company can set up its own plant in the medium term. Reliance Retail, the retail unit of Reliance, has recently launched air coolers from the Wyzr brand. According to sources, the company is planning to expand the range in categories like televisions, washing machines, refrigerators, air conditioners, small appliances and LED bulbs. The company wants to design and develop these products in-house as it wants to establish a homegrown brand in a market dominated by foreign labels. The company previously launched private label brand ReConnect, which featured products manufactured by third parties. Reliance Retail Chief Financial Officer Dinesh Taluja had told analysts about the new brand launch during RIL’s fourth quarter earnings call on April 22. But not much was revealed about this.
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what is the plan
Sources say that the company wants to sell Wyzr products through its Reliance Digital stores as well as independent dealers, regional retail chains and e-commerce platforms like Amazon and Flipkart. Geomart Digital (JMD), engaged in B2B distribution of electronic products, will take Wyzr products to other stores. JMD’s merchant base to grow by 20% in FY2024. Wyzr products will be cheaper than brands like LG, Samsung and Whirlpool. These companies are popular in categories like TV, refrigerator and washing machine. Similarly, Tata’s company Voltas is number one in the AC market but foreign companies like LG and Daikin are also not far behind it.
“Reliance had already disrupted the feature phone market dominated by multinationals with JioPhone,” a source said. The company wants to repeat the same success in electronics by riding the wave of Make-in-India. In the year 2022, Reliance had bought 50.1% stake in the Indian unit of US company Sanmina for Rs 1,670 crore to expand in the electronics manufacturing sector. Sanmina has a 100-acre campus in Chennai, where it can set up a plant for Wyzr products. He said that it has not been finalized yet. The company’s priority right now is to launch products.
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The company has tried before also
Reliance Retail did not answer questions in this regard. Mirk Electronics MD Vijay Mansukhani declined to comment, while an email sent to Dixon remained unanswered. Reliance Retail had earlier tried to sell televisions and some appliances under its brand Reconnect, but had limited success. These were designed and developed by the company’s partners. These were sold only through Reliance Digital stores without any marketing push and were intended to compete with Future Group’s private label Koryo and Tata Group’s Croma. Reliance Retail still uses the Reconnect brand for accessories. It acquired the license for the BPL and Kelvinator brands a few years ago and launched some TV, refrigerator and washing machine models.
But the company did not achieve much success. These products were locally designed and manufactured by companies like Dixon, Mirk and PG Electroplast. Some were imported from China and Indonesia, made by TCL, Midea and Toshiba. A source said that Reliance management felt that it needed its own brand so that it could firmly control product design and manufacturing to make its mark in this market. Taluja had said that the company’s FMCG business is progressing well. He said brands like Campa and Independence have gained a strong foothold. The company is building a supply chain for these products so that we have a domestic supply chain in different parts of the country.