Good Riddance! Old Is Always Gold In India

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: In Singapore, if one wants to upgrade a television set, all that needs to be done is to pay for a new one and the old one must be dumped! And it is not a paltry amount that needs to be paid to dump the old one. However, ‘old is gold’ is a theory that Indians take very seriously. Be it old television sets, old washing machines, old cars or even old houses. Every thing has a value in this country.

Many critics of exchange offers have called it a passing fad. Some had gone to the extent of predicting an early death for the phenomenon. That has not happened. The reality is: exchange offers still remain a large part of the business for white goods companies. It generates massive volumes. Says Sansui Ltd chief executive officer Anil Khera: "Till date, exchange offers for colour televisions (CTV) constitute 15 per cent of the overall CTV market size. And in fact, during a mega event or festive season, the contribution of exchange offers goes up to more than 18 per cent."

Explaining the benefits of an exchange scheme, Mr Khera adds: "While the exchange offer scheme for CTV is on, instead of focussing at the conventional CTVs, we offer a high-end CTV to customers in order to upgrade them to a flat-CTV or a large-screen CTV. Exchange offers, being a continuous business, has opened up a new market segment whereby a second-hand CTV market in metros directly caters to black and white sales in the rural market."

The proliferation of technology to rural India has been one of the key drivers of this phenomenon across the white goods industry. Old equipment generates supply that can be painful to dispose of.

However, these products find a very good market in rural areas as they are cheaper than brand new products and are sold by a company’s authorised agencies giving them a sense of comfort and reliability. Many companies do give guarantees on second-hand products sold by them in order to remove any scepticism that might be there in the mind of the customer.