Textile major Welspun India’s phased foray into the flooring products segment is likely to net it over Rs 100 crore in sales during the current financial year, with the company planning to soft launch the line in a few major cities over the current quarter. According to managing director and executive director Rajesh Rameshkumar Mandawewala, the company is likely to soft launch the brand with a marketing campaign featuring brand ambassador Amitabh Bachchan over the next few weeks.
Welspun Flooring will offer stone polymer composite luxury performance tiles, carpet tiles, wall to wall carpets and artificial grass initially. “From a marketing perspective, our first launch is likely to happen in the next few days,” said Mandawewala at a post-earnings analysts call, adding that the firm wants to soft launch the line in a few cities like Bengaluru and Hyderabad first. “We will launch it over a few more cities in the current quarter based on the learnings from there and then, maybe, go in for an all-India launch,” he added.
The company has already commissioned its new flooring plant in Hyderabad on September 13, with around Rs 800 crore out of the planned Rs 1,150 crore capital expenditure already capitalised. The firm is also in the process of establishing its distribution networks for the range, with Mandawewala noting that it currently has around 450 dealers and over 55 distributors, 14 of which are on the commercial side.
However, it being early days and with teething troubles to be settled, the brand expects the new vertical to generate sales of around Rs 100 crore in the current financial year. “But (these distributors) have just been on-boarded over the past few months, and even our own network is getting established in terms of field force, etc... Two, the plant has just been commissioned, and there are product development, sampling and cataloging exercises that will have to be carried out… This may consume the whole of (this quarter). So, our current estimate is to do about Rs 100 crore of our revenue in the current year,” Mandawewala said.
Welspun’s slice of the flooring pie