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Tag: B Thiagarajan

  • Blue Star hires ex-Unilever exec Mohit Sud to head unitary cooling division

    Blue Star hires ex-Unilever exec Mohit Sud to head unitary cooling division

    MUMBAI; Blue Star Limited has tapped Mohit Sud, a seasoned Hindustan Unilever executive, to lead its burgeoning air-conditioning empire as group president of unitary cooling products. 

    Sud, armed with a mechanical engineering degree and an MBA from XLRI Jamshedpur, brings over two decades of soap-selling savvy to the cooling game. After cutting his teeth across India flogging everything from detergents to beauty potions, the former vice president will now build Blue Star’s market position.

    Sud will shoulder end-to-end responsibility for the company’s portfolio of room air conditioners, deep freezers, water coolers, visi coolers and modular cold rooms—essentially anything that keeps things nippy. His remit covers the full gamut: sales, marketing, service, R&D, manufacturing and supply chain.

    “The market for room air conditioners and commercial refrigeration products is poised for exponential growth in the coming years, and we aim to further buildon our leadership position and grow our market share,”   declared  Blue Star managing director B Thiagarajan. “Mohit’s rich experience in sales, distribution and marketing will be extremely valuable.’’

    “The Company has been on a growth path, and I am very optimistic about our prospects. To be future-ready, we have been making significant investments in R&D, manufacturing, digitalisation, sales and marketing. Simultaneously, we are strengthening our leadership team with external and internal talent. Mohit is an important addition to our team as wescale our consumer-facing businesses,” added chairman & managing director Vir S Advani.

  • BlueStar promotes new cooler range

    BlueStar promotes new cooler range

    MUMBAI: Air conditioner manufacturer, Blue Star, recently entered the air cooler market with its own brand: Windus.

    Blue Star in association with its advertising partner FCB Interface, has created an ad film that communicates the product’s benefit in a truly interesting manner. Four young women visiting their friend’s house on a hot summer day slip into winter wear just before entering the house. And why? Because their friend’s house has a Windus air cooler from Blue Star.

    Blue Star joint managing director B Thiagarajan mentions, “Blue Star launched its range of Windus air coolers last year with the strategic goal of pursuing new opportunities in areas adjacent to its current businesses. The new TV commercial for the upcoming summer highlights that the Windus range of air coolers provides winter-like absolute cooling even in the scorching summer season.”

    The communication focuses on a stylish imagery for the product, along with maintaining Blue Star’s premium brand personality in the minds of the consumers.

    The Company continues to increase its investments in this product category, with the objective of establishing Blue Star as a significant player in this segment.

    FCB Interface CCO Robby Mathew says, “What do you do when you enter a category where everyone’s saying the same thing in the same way? The answer is this film. A simple plot where guests are padding up in layers to visit a Blue Star home in summer! The beautiful lensing, the music and Blue Star’s offbeat humour, all come together to make a film that is way outside the category.”

  • FCB creates Blue Star ‘cooling’ campaign

    MUMBAI: Blue Star, known for its unmatched innovation, has yet again taken the ‘Precision cooling’ of their inverter AC to a whole new level where it allows setting the temperature in decimals. The new commercial, conceptualized by FCB Interface ratifies Blue Star’s USP in the latest brand campaign.

    The campaign has been released on the digital platform and will soon be on air across leading channels supported by print, digital and OOH presence.

    The film shows an inconsequential fight between a couple over disagreement of room temperature. Both are stuck on a temperature which each feels comfortable with. This recoils a quirky, dramatic hand-shadow fight between the two of them. This is where the Blue Star AC with precision cooling comes into the picture and the couple shadow fighting ferociously like animals end up as love birds and the fight ends in truce.

    Blue Star Joint MD B Thiagarajan says, “Blue Star has set a new benchmark in the air conditioner industry with the launch of India’s first Precision Inverter Split AC that allows temperature setting in decimals to provide the user with precise cooling as desired for ultimate comfort. This reiterates Blue Star’s expertise in cooling and supports our value proposition of ‘Nobody Cools Better’. The TVC communicates the need for cooling in decimals and we are sure most of the viewers will relate to this insight”.

    FCB Interface Chief Creative Officer Robby Mathew says, “Blue Star films have always been quirky and this one’s no different. To bring alive the insight of how couples disagree on the right temperature in the room, we used a hand-shadow fight between animals. Vicious wolves transform into dinosaurs and then sharp-toothed monsters. Peace returns to the household only when they discover the new Blue Star Inverter Split, which allows them to make temperature adjustments in decimal points. There is absolutely no use of computer graphics in the film. The shadows were created live, on set, by the finest exponents of hand shadowgraphy in the country – the Calcutta-based father-son team of Amar and Arko Sen.”

  • Blue Star earmarks Rs 35 crore for summer ad campaign

    Blue Star earmarks Rs 35 crore for summer ad campaign

    KOLKATA: Air conditioning and commercial refrigeration company, Blue Star, aims to spend Rs 35 crore during this summer on advertising and brand communication. The company has earmarked an investment of around Rs 41 crore as marketing spend for the entire next fiscal (2015-16).

    The company also intends to continue investing in its digital marketing efforts in social media as well as the internet, considering that most Blue Star buyers belong to the highest socio-economic category (SEC A), who are active on the internet.

    “Blue Star achieves around 40 per cent of its sale during summer season, so for our summer campaign, we aim to spend around Rs 35 crore,” said Blue Star executive director and president – AC&R Products Business B Thiagarajan.

    The company unveiled a new range of contemporary, stylish and energy-efficient room air conditioners on Wednesday in Kolkata.

    “Our company has identified a new value proposition of ‘Nobody Cools Better’ and soon this will be used widely with a set of TV commercials supported by advertisements in mainline dailies, cinema and hoardings. Since we are now well entrenched in the residential segment, we plan to aggressively promote this new proposition in TV, print ad hoarding,” informed Thiagarajan.

    It should be noted that last year for the summer campaign, the company had earmarked Rs 25 crore in marketing spends. This summer, the company is looking at vibrant TVCs like its previous campaign ‘Daddy Cool.’ The company’s ad agency Interface has already been roped in to assist Blue Star for the TVC.

    The company also plans to enhance investments on new product development and research and design initiatives in order to develop modern and sophisticated products.

    Talking about the business and growth, Thiagarajan said that Blue Star is eyeing to triple the share of inverter ACs in its room air conditioner sales by 2015 as the company is underpinning its hopes on increasing preference for energy efficiency products among the buyers and falling prices of inverter ACs.

    Thiagarajan also said that the room AC business was a strong focus area for the company and it would be the primary growth driver of its revenues in the coming years. “We have been encouraged by the growth in market share in this business despite the strong presence of global brands. So we have decided to invest in R&D, manufacturing and marketing to boost room AC business,” he added.

    Thiagarajan further said that countries like Japan and China are moving towards inverter ACs to help save power consumption. The company plans to sell 3.4 lakh units of ACs by 2015-16 of which seven per cent would be inverter.

    Last year the room air-conditioners industry grew by 10 per cent in volume terms and in value terms it was 19 per cent.

    Thiagarajan also said that the company is likely to finalize a manufacturing location by July or September next fiscal as it is looking to expand its manufacturing base. “We have a capacity to manufacture four lakh AC units at present,” he concluded.