Modi’s Atmanirbhar Bharat call lifts sentiment for Indian brands but a major roadblock still exists

Pent-up demand in the market has significantly supported the sales of consumer durables this festive season, and consumers are more inclined towards Indian brands this time. After Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call for Atmanirbhar Bharat, many Indian brands have witnessed a rise in demand. “We saw a spike in sales and people were looking for Indian brands. We got a lot of support, and still, we are getting it for being an Indian brand,” Arjun Bajaj, Founder, Shinco India, told Financial Express Online. The government’s self-reliant call has managed to change public sentiment towards Indian brands.

“The government has already taken action by putting a ban on Completely Built Units (CBUs) as everyone needs to start supporting Make in India,” Avneet Singh Marwah, Director and CEO, Super Plastronics – a Kodak brand licensee, told Financial Express Online. Due to the pandemic and the ongoing tension between India-China, the consumers have become aggressive and have started preferring our very own, non-chinese brands, Marwah added.

However, India’s consumer durable industry took a strong headwind from the coronavirus pandemic. The production of consumer durables remained dormant during the entire period of the lockdown. Turning to the second quarter, the recovery in this segment that became evident in May 2020 had been tepid, RBI said in its October bulletin. During April-August, the production of refrigerators fell 61.6 per cent, while the production of air conditioners fell 82.7 per cent, according to a report by Care Ratings.

Now, even as the consumer durables segment has started to see a jump in sales despite salary cuts and Covid’s impact on jobs, there are still some major roadblocks on the way. Specifically, about the television industry, over-dependence on China and other countries for components is one of the biggest hurdles that the Indian companies are facing as of now. “All component factories in India had to shut down because of the cost pressure arising from the cheap imports from China,” Avneet said.

Even the primary raw materials in India are to be imported from other countries. “Major issue for an Indian manufacturer is depending upon other countries for primary raw materials such as Open cell panel, which is most important for making television,” Arjun said.

Meanwhile, the industry has started receiving expressions of interest from global companies to set up their plants in India and the industry believes that the next 7 years will be very crucial for its growth. It is interesting that the bank credit growth in the consumer durable segment has seen the maximum on-year growth of 65 per cent, showed a recent RBI report.