These days, we take great pride in displaying and using gadgets like smartphones and tablets, but pay little attention to the products that provide real safety and protection to our household equipment. One such item is the ubiquitous little box guarding our refrigerators, TV sets and air-conditioners — the voltage stabiliser.
Mention the name and the one brand that immediately springs to mind is V-Guard and its logo.
Comforting logo
There is something comforting and protective about looking at a picture of a mother holding her young. That is exactly why the V- Guard (V stands for volt) logo depicts a kangaroo with a joey in its pouch: it implies ‘protection’.
This is also true of the V-Guard brand, the brainchild of Kochouseph Chittilappilly, a first-generation entrepreneur from an agricultural family in Kerala. In 1977, with a loan of ₹1 lakh from his father and just two workers, he started a small venture in a garage to manufacture voltage stabilisers.
Initially begun as a partnership concern, Premier Electronics was the company that manufactured the product under the ‘V-Guard’ brand name. The business grew steadily and soon, across South India, ‘V-Guard’ became synonymous with voltage stabilisers.
The master stroke
Industries in Kerala have always been troubled by labour union problems, and this brand was no exception. Even as the company grew in name and fame, the late 1980s saw labour unrest forcing the firm to shut down one of its units.
A decision to outsource production was taken and Self Help Groups (SHGs) — run and staffed by women — were given the task of assembling the stabilisers. This innovative solution proved to be a master-stroke. Even today, production, packaging and other related tasks are outsourced, while the parent company focuses on core competencies such as R&D and innovation.
About 60 such SHGs are involved in manufacturing the company's stabilisers throughout South India, while manufacturing of other products has been shifted to North India.
In the meantime, the partnership was dissolved and the company was incorporated as V-Guard Industries Ltd in 1996. More products continued to be launched under the brand name — the years between 1980 and 1997 saw the introduction of water-heaters, high-quality pumps, wires and cables, and stabilisers for air-conditioners.
The brand was developing an iconic status in Kerala. In 1998, it received the Industry Excellence Award for Medium Scale Industries by the Institution of Engineering (India), Kochi. It also received the Excellence in Productivity Award for Medium Scale Industries by Kerala Productivity Council in 2007. The same year, the V-Guard R&D division at Kochi was awarded the ISO 9001:2008 certification for excellence in quality management systems in Design and Development of Electronic Equipments.
IPO
With the expansion of existing product lines, V-Guard decided to go public in 2008. It made an Initial Public Offering (IPO) of ₹60-65 crore, with a share being offered at an average price of ₹82. But though the retail side was oversubscribed by investors from Kerala, it did not attract many institutional investors, as the brand was not well-known outside the State.
Over-dependency
This woke the company up. Realisation came quickly that V-Guard was too dependent on its basic product — voltage stabilisers contributed to more than 50 per cent of the company’s revenues and 80 per cent of the profits. The competition was much stronger at the all-India level.
The company then rallied and diversified into other product categories; it strengthened its sales, marketing and distribution network, provided excellent after-sales service and steadily made its presence felt in markets outside Kerala. By 2012, profits had grown four-fold, as the brand became known throughout the country.
To strengthen its position across India, in 2009, V-Guard opened three manufacturing facilities — an LT cable factory in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu; a wires and cables factory at Kashipur, Uttarakhand; and a water-heater and fans factory at Kala Amb, Himachal Pradesh.
The journey
It is a matter of pride for V-Guard that the Coimbatore and Kashipur factories received the OHSAS 18001:2007 certification for employee safety, as well as the ISO 14001:2007 certification for conforming to the highest international standards of environment management systems. In 2013, V-Guard commissioned India’s largest manufacturing plant for solar water heaters in Perundurai, Tamil Nadu.
Today, the company, that had started with just two workers, has about 1,900 employees and more than 5,000 indirect workers. Its portfolio consists of 15 products, both domestic and industrial. V-Guard has a turnover of more than ₹1,800 crore and a 50-million-strong consumer base.
Recently, its stock hit a record high of ₹1,470 on the NSE (National Stock Exchange) — a mind-boggling 18 times the issue price! More than 500 distributors, 3,000 direct dealers, above 20,000 retailers and service centres now operate across the length and breadth of the country.
The V-Guard name stands not just for quality products but also trusted and trouble-free performance, with equal emphasis placed on customer care. The company claims that its products meet all international standards.
The unique “customer delight” focus of the R&D wing of V-Guard, along with its constant endeavour to innovate, has earned it the treasured DSIR (Department of Scientific and Industrial Research) Recognition in 2012-2013 for the ‘In-house R&D Centre’. Only a few other electrical and electronics manufacturing companies have received this.
V-Guard’s newest voltage stabiliser factory is in Sikkim and is expected to go on stream soon. The company’s latest product is an app-controlled, intelligent water heater ‘Verano’, that can give energy consumption details and send alerts to customers. It is said to be the first Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled geyser in India that can be controlled by a smartphone from anywhere in the world!
Philanthropy at heart and in practice
The government awarded Kochouseph Chittilappilly the ‘Rashtriya Samman Patra’ award for being the highest tax payer. The founder is also a philanthropist at heart and in practice: at the age of 61, he donated a kidney to a poor truck driver! Along with the Kidney Federation of India, he started a unique ‘kidney donation chain’, by requesting one member of every kidney beneficiary’s family to donate a kidney to someone else, the next recipient’s relative to do the same and so on.
It naturally follows that Corporate Social Responsibility does not end with just lip service here. Projects are underway to sponsor children’s education and encourage budding talent. V-Guard is also involved in improving infrastructure facilities in schools, and has introduced the concept of hygiene and good health by providing safe drinking water and sanitation facilities to students. Its healthcare initiatives include setting up blood donation camps, supplying medical provisions and dialysis care. It also contributes generously when natural disasters strike.
V-Guard also forayed into other fields. An amusement park called ‘Veegaland’ (now ‘Wonderla Kochi’) was opened in 2000. This was followed by the establishment of ‘Wonderla Bangalore’, said to be the biggest amusement park in India. Two more are apparently coming up near Chennai and Hyderabad. While ‘Wonderla’ amusement parks are headed by Chittilappilly’s son Arun, V-Guard’s current managing director is the other son, Mithun.
And this is probably the first for an electrical appliances manufacturing company: the 12-storeyed corporate office building of V-Guard in Vennala, Kerala, is a ‘green’ wonder, with flowering plants all around the building, including the roof top. There is minimum air-conditioning, a rain water harvesting system that meets all water needs and solar panels that ensure a steady supply of hot water. Its environment-friendly character won it the 2009-2010 Gold Leaf Award for architectural excellence.