COVID-19: Havells India managed to reduce advertising spends, other costs, says CMD Anil Rai Gupta

Anil Rai Gupta, CMD of Havells India, in an interview with CNBC-TV18, today said the company has managed to reduce advertising (ad) spends and other costs.

“There was a lot of restructuring of bad cost and good cost; the bad cost was taken out, technology adoptions started happening. So, if we compare with FY19-20, there will be margin expansion and some of the cost which has been taken out in the last year would be sustainable and some of the cost will come back like advertising, promotion. In Q3-Q4, we were back to normalised advertising, promotion,” he said.

On business, Rai Gupta said, “Last year, post lockdown the consumer and residential part of the business, which is 75 percent of our business, contributed good growth in Q2 and Q3 and in fact, the infrastructure and industrial part, which is 25 percent of the business was showing degrowth in Q2 and Q3. It was in Q4 that we started seeing investments in private capex as well as government infrastructure.”