Restrictions may impact sales in short-term, pent-up demand will release soon after: Godrej's Kamal Nandi

Kamal Nandi, Business Head and Executive Vice President, Godrej Appliances

The Maharashtra state government has put in place a series of restrictions to minimise the COVID-19 spread. This includes restrictions on non-essential manufacturing across the state, meaning that only medical supplies related production can continue.

In an interaction with Moneycontrol, Kamal Nandi, Business Head and Executive Vice President-Godrej Appliances said that while the restrictions could lead to some short-term impact on sales in the state, the pent-up demand will be released as soon as the curbs are lifted. Excerpts:

The restrictions are till May 1. While this would lead to some impact on sales in the short-term, there is a pent-up demand that will be released as soon as the curbs are lifted.

For us, our production facility at Shirwal in Satara, Maharashtra is manufacturing the medical refrigerators since it is a product under essential category.

This year, both product availability and capacity is taken care of. The situation is now like last year when there was a nationwide lockdown.

Even though Maharashtra sales is shut for the next few days due to the restrictions, rest of India is open. This means that for us 85 percent of potential market is open for sale.

We are expecting a spike in demand. We are seeing that the demand of products in the cooling category is higher then April 2019 as per our estimates. This is despite Maharashtra being closed.

One of the reasons for this is the extended work-from-home for professionals and they want a comfortable environment at home.

In India, appliances have moved from the discretionary category to essential category. Be it refrigerators, washing machines or air conditioners, they are required across homes.

A surge in COVID-19 and any restrictions may lead to temporary drops in sales, but the overall demand is intact. We saw that in Q3FY21 as well where there was a 35-40 percent sales growth.