In an interview with CNBC-TV18, Vir Advani, VC & MD, Blue Star, said that he expects strong growth in the air conditioning business in the next quarter. He believes there will be a lot of pent-up demand coming in during the summer months. Additionally, he expects the B2B vertical to start growing as well in the future.

Shedding light on the company’s Q3 performance, he said that the company gained market share. He added that the decline in the margin in Q3 was due to higher raw material prices. He explained that going ahead, the company plans to maintain margin at similar levels without any price hikes. He believes the three price hikes taken till now will suffice and the company won’t need another hike in the next quarter.

He said, “We have done three price increases over the last 9 months, which has helped us shore up some of the margin pressure and the other big thing we have done is to redesign our entire product portfolio into more cost-effective products."

"So these two strategies have yielded some benefits and we are looking forward to maintaining these margins for the next 3-6 months without a further price increase. So we will not be raising prices further, in Q4FY22. We will look at that again in the summer time. Now we are maintaining prices and are expecting our margins to hold,” Advani said.

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On the PLI scheme, he explained that they have already started the expansion process to avail the benefits from the scheme. He believes the expansion will come on stream from the October-November period of this year.

He said, “We have already started the construction of a factory in south India that will go into production by October-November of this year (2022). So we have already moved very fast, taking advantage of the benefits that the government has given us."

"This budget (Union Budget 2022), while it didn’t do a lot for consumer demand, which is where the room air conditioner industry gets its revenue from, we are happy with the capex-oriented approach, the public spending that the government has announced because that helps our B2B businesses.”

Watch the video for the full interview.

First Published:Feb 3, 2022 2:09 PM IST