Symphony confident of keeping up with high past growth rates

Speaking to CNBC-TV18, Achal Bakeri, CMD of Symphony, said that demand in Q2 has been robust and performance will remain sustainable going forward.Bakeri further said that Symphony, a leading maker of air coolers, has over 50 percent market share in organised sector.Below is the verbatim transcript of Achal Bakeri's interview to Ekta Batra & Prashant Nair.Prashant: Could you talk about the kind of demand you are seeing in Q2 or rather what kind of demand you have seen in Q2 so far?A: It has been very robust and our historical track record of compounded annual growth rate should continue.Ekta: If you are talking about that, are we looking at 33 percent volume growth, 100 percent year-on-year growth in the export market in this quarter as well?A: I cannot get into specifics but I will say that the overall trend of the past few years or the past few quarters can be extrapolated and you could assume that the current quarter and the next will be confirming to those numbers.    Prashant: Could you talk to us about what your business?A: The organised sector, of which Symphony is a part, still comprises about 25 percent of the total sales in the country. So the vast majority, nearly 75 percent still comes from the unorganised sector. However, within the organised sector Symphony has a dominant market share of about 50 percent, so the rest of the 50 percent comprises of whole host of companies, some that have been around for several years and some are relatively new entrants. As far as our pricing and how do we respond to competition is concerned, we have not resorted to any price change of any sort whatsoever because we realised that regardless of where we are the competition would have to price themselves at a safe 10-15 percent lower than us to be able to survive. So any change upwards or downwards would be sort of mirrored by the competition - that's one.Second, Symphony has been driving the rate of growth in this category through its innovation, through its advertising and everything and sadly none of the competitors are able to do that. Ekta: Your wall mounted coolers, how much of growth are you seeing in terms of volumes post launch?A: It just test marketed in Ahmadabad last summer, so it's too early to comment on what kind of growth that will generate for us. However, I must say that Symphony is the one that is driving the category, whether its wall mounted air coolers or whole host of other models that we are in the process of introducing in the market. So you can expect a lot of innovative products from Symphony and also innovative marketing and advertising as well.