Hyderabad-based Amaze has emerged as a quality manufacturer and exporter of panel room heaters from India. Having satisfied the international markets like United States, Europe, Australia and more, the company now has plans to develop the India market. Buildingandinteriors.com presents an exclusive interaction with Mr.Harsha Vangla, Joint Managing Director, Amaze Global Manufacturing Pvt.Ltd.
B&I: How are your solutions different from the ones available in the market?
HV: Currently, the market offers high-powered radiant and convectors in the wall heater space. They consume higher electricity and not the safest in the market. Our brand ‘Amaze’ is the only brand in the market to offer the safest wall mounted heaters that come with cost-effective features to allow consumers to save on home heating costs. What would be of particular interest to Architects and Interior Designers is that we offer heating solutions for all spaces – bedrooms, bathrooms, under desk heating, cabinet heating and foot warmers that can be painted to match the rooms décor so it’s not just any home appliance but a customer can customize by painting or printing and make it look like a ‘portrait or a piece of art’.
B&I: What kind of after sales support is required in this product category? How do you ensure a strong after sales support to your customers?
HV: Since it’s a maintenance free product, customers do not face any issue with the product. We offer a 3 year warranty for any manufacturing defects. We have a global customer support at Cape Town which handles all the issues and concerns relating to our product. Our entire customer related queries and issues are resolved within 24 hours of being registered with us.
B&I: What kind of competition (in terms of solutions that you offer) do you face globally?
HV: We used to have a South African competitor who was the global leader in this category but with our strategic acquisition of it’s team and market, we are the global leaders today in wall mounted heating category. We do face competition from China but the Chinese manufacturers cannot match our quality.
B&I: Do you sell in your brand name or as OEM?
HV: We operate with different strategies for different markets. We understand the market needs and act accordingly. USA, Canada, UK and Northern Europe have a huge potential and scope for many brands to exist. We supply our brand and also do OEM for one of our distributors. But markets like South Africa offer tough competition. So, the distribution margins are very less making the distributor model non-viable. Hence, we supply directly to retail chains.
B&I: Which are your strongest markets globally? Why?
HV: USA is definitely the strongest market because of purchasing power/spending capacity. We have been selling in USA for 9 years and we see a growth each year. We expect to grow further and introduce new products into USA. South Africa, though it’s a tough market, the volumes are very high compared to other markets.
B&I: When you look at the India market, what kind of approach you are planning to work on – direct to retailer with own brand/OEM to retailers?
HV: I believe that India will emerge as a strong e-commerce market-place in the coming years. With technology reaching all corners and internet being available at low costs, we can definitely see a growth in e-commerce segment. We would want to build our brand Amaze and we prefer this channel compared to the traditional retailer model.
B&I: Are you also open to OEMs with manufacturers (contract manufacturing) in the Indian market?
HV: If we can identify any manufacturer who can give us the quality we would definitely be open to contract manufacturing of different products. We believe that we can really grow in this way. We specialize in wall heaters and have a lucrative sales channel. If we can identify any unique and good quality products made by others in India we would love to partner with them and push the product through our existing channels.
B&I: How important is the specifier (Architect/Interior Designer) in your business format?
HV: Architects and Interior Designers are very important especially for project sales. We have tied-up for many projects in USA, Canada and Australia where the interior designers approve our product and decide the kind of image to be printed on to the heater so that it matches the theme and décor.
B&I: Your solutions carry a DIY approach. In India, the DIY solutions are not very popular. Your take on that? Would selling in India require installation support?
HV: Yes, I agree that DIY is not as popular in India but things are changing and India will soon get into DIY because of the difficulty of labor, expense and coordination. But we do not want to wait till then, we have come up with a patented solution for mounting our heaters without drilling of holes. We call it the EZY mount stand. All it takes is 2 minutes to set up installation without using any tools.
B&I: What are your growth plans? What is your current turnover?How does India fit into your scheme of things?
HV: We are expecting a growth rate of 35-40% every year for the next 3 years starting 2020. We were at 2 crores in 2017 as we had issues with product development and technicalities. Once we resolved them in 2018, we hit 11 crores and in 2019 we were at 18 crores. Our subsidiaries have an additional turnover of 10 crores in UK and South Africa.
B&I: Are you looking at a pan-India presence? What are the important regions for you in India?
HV: North India and hill stations across the country are important markets for our heaters. We are going to introduce battery operated fans in 2020 and we would say pan-India would be our potential market.
B&I: The project market is quite big in India esp. the government sector. How do plan to tap this market?
HV: We are in the process of approaching the MES (Indian Army), as we believe that bunkers are the best places for wall panel heaters and it is a huge market as our army personnel need efficient and energy saving methods of heating. We feel that Amaze would be a judicial choice.
