The company is planning licensee manufacturing units in Nigeria and Bangladesh to support the export plan. Negotiations are on at both places and there might be some equity participation by the SK Khaitan group in these ventures too.

Khaitan Electricals plans to export two lakh fans in the current year and four lakh in 2000-01. The plan is to cross the 10 lakh mark by the year 2002.

The markets being targeted are the Saarc countries, West Asia, eastern and central Africa and at a later stage even south America and Australia.

Managing director of Khaitan Electricals, Sunil Khaitan says, ``We want to compete in the international markets in terms of quality. We are presenting an exclusive range of aesthetically designed fans for the export market.''

Khaitan says in the international markets,Chinese exporters have cornered a large share by providing fans at very low prices. ``However, we do not want to compete with the Chinese in terms of price,'' Khaitan added.

``Khaitan will provide value for money in the international markets just as we do for the Indian markets. We do not want to grab the marketshare with low quality products,'' Khaitan added.

The entire Marathon range of Khaitan, with almost 25 models, is being made available for the exports markets.

Khaitan says, ``The most important thing here is to build a good sales and service network in the markets in which we are going to operate. We would like to have our own office in each region that we operate although service and distribution will depend to a large extent on the local distributors.''

``We will recruit our sales force locally and send over some people from India. It will be important to fit in our personnel in these markets in order to establish our products there,'' he adds.

The licensees in Bangladesh and Nigeria, whenthey come up will basically be assembly plants that will follow Khaitan Electricals' drawings. ``We will be strictly monitoring the quality at the overseas plants,'' says Khaitan.

The Marathon range of Khaitan ceiling fans is priced between Rs 1,100 and Rs 3,000 in India. The most costly fans are the Khaitan Lumair models.

``Our fans will compete with the Japanese fans in the international markets. Two of our factories are ISO-9001 certified and we are working on the process for our third factory too,'' Khaitan added.

The company has a 14 per cent share of the Indian ceiling fans market and hopes to increase its share to 18 per cent in the current year.