Eveready focused on doubling alkaline battery segment growth this year: Company Sr VP Banerjee

A household name for batteries, Eveready India has revamped its offerings as high drain devices take centre stage in the lives of Indians, necessitating the need for superior and longer lasting options. Company Senior Vice president and Strategic Business Unit Head (Batteries and Flashlights), Anirban Banerjee, spoke to DH’s Shakshi Jain, to shed light on the latest launch and a shift towards alkaline batteries in India, a common practice in many advanced and emerging economies across the globe.

Edited excerpts.

Give us a quick insight into Eveready’s business today?

While Eveready does batteries, it also manufactures and is probably a leader in the branded flashlights business as well. We also do a considerable amount of lighting, although we are a very small part of the lighting industry. That being said, batteries continue to be the mainstay of the business. Roughly about two-thirds of the business is generated from batteries and close to about 90% of the bottomline comes from the batteries business.

As we stand today, in the Indian market we hold over 50% market share of batteries. Within the Zinc-carbon battery segment we would be touching close to 60% market share. The most popular deployment for these batteries is in remote controls, wall clocks, flashlights. These are some products of routine nature which over the last couple of decades have been fuelling the growth and sales of batteries. As devices grow, battery consumption also grows.

Share details about the big launch last week.

What we’ve launched recently is the revamp of our alkaline batteries. The chemistry allows for much longer sustained performance. If the Zinc-carbon works in a device for one week, possibly the alkaline batteries will allow for about three-four weeks in the same device, for the same usage. Thus it is more expensive than the Zinc-carbon batteries. 

At the moment, alkaline is about 10% of the Indian batteries market. We have an offering called Ultima but we’ve not talked about it, we’ve not advertised it significantly, we’ve never made a distinction between Ultima versus our regular red batteries. Now we’ve revamped our Ultima portfolio which comes as Ultima and Ultima Pro. The proposition is that the Ultima range of batteries are 400% more longer lasting than the traditional Zinc-carbon batteries. The Ultima Pro is close to about 800% longer lasting. 

Why the revamp?

The need for batteries was mostly restricted to wall clocks, remote controls, etc. As the Indian population gets younger, and with a lot of growth in the economy, you see a proliferation of high drain devices. For example, battery operated toys. They consume huge amounts of batteries. If you open the toy from behind, you’ll have to typically put in 4 batteries. In the remote control you’ve to put in another two, sometimes three, four batteries. Some come with rechargeable batteries, others with the normal portable ones. During the Covid-19 period there was a lot of consciousness for medical devices. Each of them consumed a lot of batteries. Looking that over the next decade penetration of some of these goods will increase, there is a distinct need for stronger, superior batteries. 

Are alkaline batteries superior from a sustainability perspective as well? 

Yes, they are devoid of nickel, cadmium, mercury, etc. So they are much more friendly and sustainable in one way. Secondly, the rotation of batteries in some of these high drain devices go down as you consume more of these alkaline batteries. We’ve also added this entire anti-lock technology. There is a turbo lock which acts as an inhibitor for leakage of batteries. So it's a big anti leak proposition. 

What are your plans for the business in this fiscal year?

Batteries will continue to have dominant focus, followed by flashlights and lighting equally. We have gone on record to say that we will be looking at early double digits in growth percentage. We are currently very focussed on our alkaline segment and the entire idea would be if we can grow this business at least two times the current rate. That’s why the entire propulsion, the revamp, etc.