Usha Shriram targets 14 fold growth in lighting business

Kolkata, Jun 20 (UNI) Banking on the Government's encouragement for promotion of the burgeoning compact flurescent lamp (CFL) industry, Usha Shriram, a part of Shriram Group of Enterprises, has targeted more than 14 fold jump in turnover of its lighting business to Rs 100 crore next year from the present seven crore.

The company, targeting a sale of Rs 40 crore for its lighting division for the current fiscal, is set to come out with its full range of new products in the Rs 2000 crore CFL market by September this year, Senior General Manager, Marketing SS Sandhu today said.

At present Usha Shriram, having a number of divisions under its umbrella, has a total turnover of Rs 175 crore.

" The company plans to target the major cities for the products first and then move on to the rest of the country. By September this year we hope to reach about 100,000 households, " he said speaking to reporters while launching a new range of Eurolex CFLs under the Usha Lexus brand.

To a question, Mr Sandhu said the company would go for Intial Public Offering (IPO) in 2008-09.

He said the company also had plans to make foray into the MCB (Miniature Circuit Breakers) sector, extending its product line to cables and emergency lamps shortly.

Stating that the CFL market was experiencing a growth of 46 per cent every year, Mr Sandhu said the slash in excise duty across the country had prompted the company to go for expanding the product portfolio for which no extra investment was required to be made because of the prevailing huge demand in the market for CFL lights having considerable energy energy efficiency as compared to incandescent bulbs.

Last year the company sold 93 million pieces of CFL.

With the new range of CFLs, the company was planning to appoint 40 new distributors, who would in turn tie up with more than 3,000 new dealers to strengthen the network, Mr Sandhu said.

UNI