Thomson re-enters Indian TV, home appliances market; announces brand licensing deal

Technicolor Group brand Thomson has re-entered the Indian consumer electronic market. The company announced a brand licensing deal with Resolute Electronics in Hyderabad on Tuesday, August 4th.

As per the agreement, Resolute will invest Rs 300 crore over the next three years to increase its existing production capacity to make 2,000 television sets a day and to set up a facility to manufacture large home appliances such as refrigerators, washing machines and air conditioners.

Resolute is an electronics manufacturing services company that undertakes contract manufacturing at its facility in Medchal in Ranga Reddy district near Hyderabad. For the LED TVs, it has an exclusive tie up with Thomson, according to A. Gopal Krishna, CEO of Resolute.

The company, he says, hopes to begin with the launch of Thomson LED TVs by end August or early September. Since the aim is to go national, the first route that the company would take would be through an e-commerce platform. It has therefore tied up with Flipkart, through which it will first make the television sets available.

Later on, it plans to set up an offline sales network. The immediate goal, according to Gopal Krishna, is to get 1 per cent market share in the Indian market that sells 11 million television sets in a year. The products, he says, would be priced 10 to 12 per cent lower than the market leader.

Resolute Electronics, he says, has already invested Rs 20 crore in building the existing production facility. This is in a sense a re-entry into the Indian television market for Thomson, which was present in India till 2004 through a subsidiary route. This time, though, it has opted for the brand licensing route in India.

Speaking to Business Today on Thomson's plans and why a brand licensing route was opted for, Manuele Wahl, Senior Vice President, Technicolor, who came all the way from France for the event, said: "We are a key technology provider to the media and entertainment industry and we think we need to partner with the specialists in different territories. Our role will be to continue to communicate about the brand itself and the brand value and the opportunity to bring in technology, but in order to better understand the consumer in each territory and each product segment we need a local partner. We have approximately 15 partners globally, and this (Resolute) is the only one in India."

Wahl added that the goal is not to multiply the number of partners but to build the strongest alliance possible.