TISVA, the designer home lighting brand from homegrown fan giant Usha International, aims to steadily grow its niche luminaires business, and build the market by getting more customers to move from unbranded lighting and embrace branded lighting options.
“The last ten years have seen young and aspirational home buyers emerging in India. Our aim and strategy is to address the upper-middle income group and provide them with high quality, aesthetic lights and luminaires to beautify their homes. We are trying to shift consumers from the unbranded to the branded part of the market,” TISVA Lighting President Rajesh Kochhar told Deccan Herald.
TISVA was launched in April last year, and offers a range of premium designer lighting (LED, halogen and CFL) products for the home. Its LED designer range includes chandeliers featuring organic designs inspired by nature, table and floor lamps high on technology, wall lights, ambient lighting, pendants, and a playful light range for children — all priced between Rs 2,000 and Rs 1,20,000.
TISVA uses technology extensively, and has succeeded in adding a host of state-of-the-art elements to its products. At present, a small range of TISVA’s lighting is remote-enabled, while a larger range is still wall-controlled. “Our lighting systems are some of the latest in the market. From wall-controlled, and remote-controlled lighting, even mobile-controlled lighting may be explored,” he said, hinting at the Internet of Things (IoT), an area that cannot be ignored.
The company has its own design centre which looks at maintaining quality control and technical specifications. While the lights are designed in-house, around 70 per cent are manufactured and imported from China and Japan, while the remaining is made by contract manufacturers in India.
Small market, big plans
The market for lighting in India is worth Rs 16,000 crore, of which the decorative and designer lighting space holds a measly Rs 500 crore-Rs 600 crore. Over 70 per cent of the latter is controlled by the unorganised sector.
“The market for the (home) designer lighting business in India is rather small, the reason being that people themselves were not focusing on this space in a big way. Designer lighting meant getting cheap and shabby imported products. Currently, one of our priorities is to educate people about such products in the market, and steadily grow our market share,” Kochhar said.
Presently, the company has 13 stores across India (besides 20 shop-in-shops), which will grow to 15 by the end of this year. The stores are located in Chandigarh, Delhi, Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Pune, Chennai, Hyderabad, and Bengaluru. Each store occupies an area of 1,000-1,500 sq feet, and will see investments to the tune of Rs 30 lakh-Rs 50 lakh.
“By the end of 2016, we would have grown to 30 stores, during which we would also be foraying into East India. We are also looking at mini-metros where there is high real estate boom. While we launch new lights each season, we will also be looking at tapping institutional customers such as large housing projects and the hospitality industry,” Kochhar said.