Eveready Industries bets on appliances, LED business for growth

New Delhi: Eveready Industries India is looking beyond its traditional dry cell battery business and is banking on newly-entered electrical appliances segment along with LED lighting to become major growth drivers.

The 110-year-old company, which forayed into fans and air purifier segments earlier this year, expects around Rs 500 core revenue to come from the appliances and the LED lighting segments this fiscal.

This is expected to be around 30 per cent of the company's total turnover for the ongoing fiscal. It had a revenue of Rs 1,393.87 crore for FY2016. In the nine months ended December 31, 2016 its revenue was at Rs 1,101.14 crore.

"Any company has to chart out a growth strategy to take it to the next level. We also have aspirations for higher growth rate, which only batteries and flashlight cannot reach," Eveready Industries India Managing Director Amritanshu Khaitan told PTI.

Elaborating on the company's roadmap, he said in FY2018, the new category of appliances and fans should cross turnover of Rs 100 core. On the LED business, he said: "Our diversification into the LED space has been very successful in the last two years."

As a result, he said, the overall lighting business has grown almost double in the last three years.

"The LED lighting category should contribute about Rs 400 crore (this fiscal)," Khaitan said. He, however, said the battery business would continue to be the company's mainstay. "As a category, it is the cash cow for the company and it's highly profitable. It is giving us a lot of cash flow to invest," Khaitan said.