Four years ago, Anil Rai Gupta's Havells gate-crashed the consumer durables club by pocketing Lloyd. As it now trails behind the big boys, can the challenger brand step up its game?
Though Lloyd, might have taken a little extra time in terms of performance, Anil Rai Gupta, chairman and managing director of Havells (top), says, it is firmly on the right path.
Image: Amit Verma
New Delhi, May 2021
Anil Rai Gupta sounded quite euphoric during the Q4 earnings call this May. The chairman and managing director of Havells had all reasons to be. The peak summer started on quite a promising note for Lloyd, the consumer durable brand that was bought by Havells, reportedly for Rs1,600 crore, in 2017.
Lloyd, which had always been under intense scrutiny of analysts for being a drag on parent brand Havells, had posted three sequential quarters of growth after the pandemic-induced battering in the first quarter (April-June 2020) of last fiscal. The Q4 revenue of Rs591 crore, a 29 percent year-on-year jump, came on the back of heady sales during the preceding quarters—Rs 280 crore and Rs 512 crore in Q2 and Q3 of FY21, respectively. “We grew in a tough year. This is definitely a very positive step for Lloyd,” Gupta asserted.