Sansui, the electronics division of Kitchen Appliances India Ltd, is reintroducing its VCD players at a price point which is lower when compared to its competitor Philips India Ltd's VCD player. Currently, Philips's VCD player is priced at Rs 10,000 while Sansui's is available at Rs 9,900.

As part of the strategy, Sansui Ltd plans to reduce prices of the VCD players thus opting for a mass production strategy. After the mass availability of the product, the Sansui VCD player will be available to the consumer at Rs 5,900, claims Mr Khera.

As regards the mass production strategy, the company plans to expand the capacity of VCD players from the existing 20,000 units to 80,000 units, this year. In the financial year January to December 2000, Sansui Ltd sold over 3,200 sets of Sansui VCD players.

According to Mr Khera: "Till now the company was importing assembled VCD players and the customs duty imposed on the assembled product was high at 35 per cent. But now, the company will import the product in theform of semi-knocked down condition and assemble VCD players in India. This is because the customs duty imposed on semi-knocked down condition is less compared to assembled products."

Targeted at consumers and dealers, Sansui Ltd has rolled out a buy-back offer effective from January and money-back offer effective February, this year. The buy-back offer will continue throughout the year and the money-back offer scheme will end in April this year. According to Mr Khera: " In the buy-back offer, dealers pay customers Rs 3,000 in exchange for the old set and Rs 4,000 for the relatively newer set. In addition, the company pays Rs 1,000 as incentive to dealers on the number of Sansui CTVs sold."

Explaining the money-back offer, adds Mr Khera: "Under the scheme, with every purchase of Sansui CTV, dealers provide the consumers cheques of Rs 25,000, Rs 10,000 or Rs 1,000. Consumers have to scratch on the cheque. Depending on the amount scratched, consumers will be offered discount on the purchase of a product."

"Through this scheme, the company expects to sell 30,000 units of CTVs in a month", says Mr Khera. The price of Sansui CTV ranges between Rs 8,000 and Rs 16,000.

Sansui Ltd has invested Rs 20 crore on both the schemes and Rs 30 crore on advertisements. The company plans to hike the adspend to Rs 40 crore by the end of 2002.

In the 5.1 million CTV market, Sansui has a marketshare of 8 per cent. The company estimates to sell 4.72 lakh CTV units in 2001. Explaining the break-up of Sansui CTVs, Says Mr Khera: "The company expects to sell 90,000 units of 14-inch CTVs, 3 lakh units of 20-inch and 21-inch, 12,000 units of 25-inch CTV and 10,000 units of 29-inch CTVs. The total size of the 29-inch CTV is 3,25,000, which is five per cent of the total market."