- Edited
August 2023 Conference Call
As we have stated in the beginning of the year, we expect the first half of this year to be a little slow, and we expect that things should turn around in the second half of this year.
Earlier, Judge brand had a separate sales force and separate distribution, which we believe was actually restrictive. And what we've now done is actually taken that and integrated it with the rest of the portfolio of the salespeople and to give it to the existing distribution of Prestige.
As we go along, we will build a portfolio of products in Judge itself, which are not there in Prestige, for example, stainless steel dinner sets; for example, bottles and flasks, which will now move entirely to Judge, accessories for pressure cookers so that the brand has a separate product portfolio in addition to being specifically or tactically oriented to garner market share for certain core categories.
I don't think imports are viable today as an option for most of the categories that we operate for 2 reasons.
One is that the gas stoves that we do and the mixer grinders that we have are very different from what is being sold by China or any of our counterparts there. The products are very different. So these are India centric, and these are largely almost 100% made in India. Within that, now there are a lot of nontariff barriers that the government has introduced in terms of certifications, like BIS certifications, like BEE certification to be coming in soon. So it's going to be unviable for people to bring in products from outside rather than a component level to bring it from outside. You will be aware that we were one of the first companies to actually move supply chains to India largely. In fact, we have now stopped imports of finished goods from China for quite some time, which was a strategic move that we made.
Overall, I think real incomes in rural India and the small-town India is actually growing. India is a bright spot in the world economy, and we are fully cognizant of that. So a low double-digit growth is something that we would think is possible, and that's what we will go after.
We have the fresh capacity that has come up. It's in our Roorkee factory. This is for inner-lid stainless steel pressure cookers. As you know, there has been a movement from aluminum to stainless steel overall in the category, and this is to augment our capacity to supply stainless steel cookers in the market, which is in and largely, inner-lid cookers are sold in the non-South.