European home appliances maker BSH Home Appliances Group expects its India business to grow 30 percent every year, and is targeting a turnover of half a billion euros by 2025, its global CEO Carla Kriwet told CNBC-TV18.

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The company that makes premium home appliances under the Bosch, Siemens and Gaggenau brands is seeing bumper demand for its cooling appliances as summers set in early in India, with the category growing 55 percent even in 2021. “We grew over 30 percent in two consecutive years. Even during the pandemic, we saw consumers focusing on home and family and that’s a trend we’re benefitting from,” Kriwet added.

BSH has invested $90 million in the Indian market, the majority of which was for a cooling appliances factory in Chennai. Kriwet says the company is also expanding its laundry line (washing machines, etc) and is investing in small domestic appliances such as grinders. The focus, she adds, is to continue to launch more products that are locally made, while expanding manufacturing capabilities in the country.

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Cashing in on the summer demand, the company recently also launched a new range of refrigerators ‘Bosch Max Flex’, which it says is developed to suit the requirements of Indian households, manufactured at the Chennai plant.

Apart from making in India for the domestic market, BSH plans to start manufacturing in the country to export to neighbouring countries, and then expanding it beyond these markets.

However, like other home appliance makers, BSH too is battling high input costs, which has led the company to hike prices of its appliances by about 5 percent. “Prices have been really challenging. I was told some freight costs from China went up sevenfold from just the beginning of April. While our general attitude is to compensate internally with smarter design, we’re not able to compensate all of it, so we’re increasing prices about 5 percent depending on the category. But this is still marginal compared to the price increases we are facing,” Kriwett added.

BSH is also set to open its own website to start selling online in the third quarter of 2022. This will be in addition to the 75 stores and five experience centres the company has in India.

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First Published:Apr 26, 2022 7:38 PM IST