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Mitashi plans to bring experience zones in metros

By Swaminathan Balasubramanian | December 29, 2017

The company is looking up to come up with experience zones in key metros. In an exclusive chat for retail4growth, Rakesh Duggar, Founder and CMD of Mitashi reveals the organization's plans and retail expansion strategies. Edited excerpts. Swaminathan Balasubramanian

Twenty years ago, when Rakesh Duggar, a chartered accountant, and Hasmukh Gada, a commerce graduate, decided to get into the video game console business, little did they know that their firm, Mitashi Edutainment, would become one of the biggest players in the segment in India today. Not keen on joining their families' jewellery and grocery businesses, the two friends decided to cut their own path with something new and challenging. They founded Maze Marketing from a small office in Ghatkopar, a central suburb of Mumbai, which was later renamed Mitashi Edutainment. In 1999, there came a turning point when Dugar and Gada decided to launch their own electronic gaming consoles at low prices to increase penetration. And thus Mitashi was born, which in Japanese means 'to watch'. The company is looking up to come up with experience zones in key metros. In an exclusive chat for retail4growth, Rakesh Duggar, Founder and CMD of Mitashi reveals the organization's plans and retail expansion strategies. Edited excerpts. 

Explain your product portfolios and how are you taking them to your customers?

We see Mitashi as India’s leading Premium Value Brand known in the consumer electronics segment for its High-Quality LED TV’s, DVD Player’s, Speaker Systems, Tablet’s & Mobile’s. After several years of R&D, Mitashi recently expanded its product portfolio, by adding Air Conditioners. The Company is also a dominant player in the Toys industry with multiple brands under its portfolio catering to a variety of ages, and an undisputed leader in the Indian Gaming industry. In India, the company has a strong foothold across the country with a huge number of trade and distribution partners and national presence Large Format Stores and across all leading e-commerce portals. Over the last year, Mitashi has successfully expanded into several International markets across Europe & the Middle East with more aggressive plans to enter more countries in the coming years.

Where do you stand when it comes to CDIT segment.

As far as our LED segment there, we made our position  clear. We want to be in the premium level. Same applies for AC and Washing machine. We stand on the top 5 amongst Indian brands of television market. As far as our sale segment, geography wise, 37% comes from West, 33% from North India, 22% from South and 8% from East. On the format-wise, 60% is general trade distribution, LFR comes to 18% and online has jumped to 22%. Earlier online was 10% of the entire sale. 

Tell us about your omni-channel presence. 

We had taken some initiatives online as well as offline. We are doing 360 degree approach across the sale formats. We had seen some of the physical retailers trying to sell online. However, it is not working.  Segment wise, we are doing good in audio video, washing machines, appliances, and now refrigerators also we are doing well in the online front. In fact, I should say, we got good traction online for refrigerator and microwave oven. 

How do you plan to enhance your offline store experience? 

Experience centre of our products is what I am looking for right now. I am looking at places like Mumbai , NCR, Bangalore or even other metros. It is still in the planning stage and our aim is to do after six months. We are looking for big malls which have quality crowd.  The typical area I am looking at is close to 1000-1500 sq ft. The challenge is that we are not getting the right location.

 

 

 

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