Symphony started from a construction garage in 1984.
Brief: 1984–2002
Fortune reports that Symphony is India’s biggest air-cooler brand. It ranks 325 on the 2019 Fortune India Next 500 list.
Achal Bakeri, its founder and CEO, started it in 1988. He had trained as an architect. He had scratched his own itch.
The air-coolers in market were ugly and noisy. When Achal started selling Symphony coolers, it cost 10% of the air conditioner. The first cooler’s price was INR 4500.
Symphony listed on share market in 1994.
Near bankruptcy: 2002 to 2009
Symphony expanded its offerings to water heaters, purifiers, washing machines, domestic flour mills, room heaters, and exhaust fans.
It had short comings. There were technical flaws in the product design of water heaters. Pricing of the washing machine was not right.Due to absence of a door-to-door sales strategy for water purifiers, it couldn’t sell them.
Debts grew, while the sales of the new offering did not.
It was referred to Board for Industrial and Financial Reconstruction (BIFR), a precursor to insolvency and bankruptcy code.
Turnaround: 2010 till present
It exited all businesses except the air cooler businesses. It relaunched the coolers between INR 5000 and INR 20,000. Coolers had new features such as touch-based and motion-based control sensors, and mosquito repellent and air cleaning technologies.
It grow profitable. Its FY 18 turnover was ₹854 . Symphony’s market capitalisation is close to ₹8,900 crore and its stock price has tripled over the past five years.
Symphony has 45% share of the organised market for air coolers by volume, 50% share by value, and 75% share of profits.
It acquired the inventor of air cooler IMPCO ( from USA). It has also Keruilai ( from China), and Climate Technologies ( Australia). It has entered industrial air cooling segment.
Now it is an international brand.
A snapshot:
50 models
275 sales executives
1000 distributors, who pay in advance
30,000 dealers, and 1000 authorised service centres
The bigger picture
Market for centralised air conditioning in India is worth INR 4,000cr. Most of the players are organised.
Market for centralised air cooling market is higher. Only a handful few are organised.
Local businesses have an opportunity here.
Worth your time: