Disruptive technologies lead to transformational changes: Sameer Saxena

A global specialist in the electrical & digital building infrastructure, Legrand is a €6.0 billion group based in Limoges, France. The group has manufacturing facilities in 90 countries and its products are sold in over 180 countries. Globally, Legrand is a leader in wiring devices and cable management with a global market share of over 20% and 14%, respectively. With an employee base of over 1,000 in India, the company is fast emerging as a leader in its core business by extending products and services that suit every segment in the local market. Headquartered in Mumbai, Legrand operates across India through 26 offices, 600 stockists, 11,500 retail outlets with three state-of-the-art manufacturing units, seven training centres and two R&D centres.

In conversation with Adgully, Sameer Saxena, Director – Strategy Marketing, Legrand India, speaks about the company’s journey in India and how digital is becoming important to connect with both the B2B and B2C customers and engage with them continuously. Good investment has been made by the company in CRM and digital tools to nurture and strengthen their relations with a diverse customer base.

Over the last decade, Legrand has become a leading brand in FMEG. How has the brand journey been for the last 10 years and how did you navigate during the pandemic?

For over two decades, Legrand has lit up Indian homes with a wide range of switches and home automation. We have connected millions and have made possibilities future ready. Our global experience enables us to electrify but also provide smart touch to your home and offices through IOT, Home Automation, Power, protection, cable management and digital infrastructure range of products. Globally, Legrand leads in switches and cable management with a global market share of over 20% and 14%, respectively.

We hold leadership position in switches and MCBs in India. The company also holds a prominent spot in IOT, Home Automation, Door Phones, power- protection products, Lighting management sensors, Cable management systems and Digital Infrastructure. The company is afast-emerging leader in its core business by extending products and services that suit every segment in the local market. We navigated on parameters of Resolve, Resilience, Return, Reimagination & Reform during the pandemic. We prioritise the safety of our people along with a smooth business endurance.

In the electrical switches category, the end customer trusts his electrician a lot. So, how do you educate your end customers to consider Legrand when it comes to electrical switches and products for home automation?

Our consumer products IoT/ Connected switches, Home Automation, Door Phones, charging solutions require strong connect with customers. Legrand’s Digital marketing team plays a key role to connect with end consumer directly. We are making relentless efforts to educate our end customers through multiple platforms and performance. We are performing various marketing initiatives to attract potential customer and providing them virtual customer experience about our products and services.

To maintain Legrand’s visibility, we engage into social media campaigns, digital marketing campaigns, advertising of products and services digitally. Also, PR tools play an important role in strategizing, enhancing to make any announcement/ initiative newsworthy for the media landscape. Modern trade models are spread across 25 locations in India through partnership models to make experience driven selling. We also provide experiential on-ground connect through our collaboration with UltraTech business solution stores to improve our reach to core target customers.

What has been your overall marketing strategy for the India market for both the B2B and B2C customers? Any learnings you apply here from your global experience?

At Legrand, we instill a digital approach to connect with our both B2B and B2C customers. We have invested in CRM and Digital tools to build and nurture relation with our diverse customer base. Marketing strategies for B2B customers largely focus on Knowledge series programs, webinars, e-mailer campaigns, B2B e-com portals, experience zones, and packaging partnership benefits on sustainability and tech features.

While B2C is driven through end consumer connect channels, product/ brand advertising campaigns, lead generation, target-based marketing, B2C e-com, and on-ground showrooms.

The electrical goods market has quite a few local brands in each region. So, how do you differentiate your products and position your brand?

Legrand India as a brand is positioned with premium value proposition in market by its design and tech expertise.

Disruptive technologies lead to transformational changes. In the current situation, everything is connected via Internet. The assimilation of interacted buildings is modifying the realityof how business operates. The IOT/ IIOT have a philosophical effect upon the future of business. Various businesses have investigated and estimated the impact of the IoT devices creating the opportunity as big as $397 billion by 2025. Innovative categories of services and products are being developed.

In the current era of high-tech innovation, it is essential to maintain building efficiency and ensure uptime. We need to keep control on our building’s consumptions and how this will be beneficial to us. We are continuously upgrading and upcoming with innovations, there is no need to wait for a product to die out.

India is a diverse market with growth coming from smaller towns. How have you penetrated the smaller towns and what’s been your strategy for the smaller towns? 

Diversity is a conclusion of India’s past economic policies. A global specialist in the electrical & digital building infrastructure, Legrand has widespread presence across India, where it offers a wide range of products in the categories of Energy distribution, Wiring devices, Home Automation, and Industrial application products.

Legrand India connects with small towns through trade programs,  social media campaigns, on-ground activation events, and community connect initiatives. We aim to cater to employment opportunities for the electricians, local, regional, and national employers who are trained or freshers from the field of Electrical world. We have qualified over 7,500 electricians in the previous four years across 15 smart cities through our RPL program. We target to train 15,000 electricians by 2024.

What has been your engagement strategy with your customers? How do you stay top of mind as a brand with your customers?

As mentioned earlier, to stay on top of mind as a brand with our customers, we are further focusing on strengthening our Digital Business vertical. We are confident about driving digital-first approach in our industry. Industry’s first digital approach will certainly be an additional contribution with our exclusive social media campaigns, digital marketing campaigns, advertising of products and services through digital mediums considering the current need of the hour. Additionally, PR tools play a vital role in strategising, enhancing, and making any initiative highly visible to our customers through media landscape.

We engage with our customer and community as whole to “Improving lives by transforming the spaces where people live, work and meet, with electrical and digital infrastructures and connected solutions that are simple, innovative and sustainable”.