“We expect the industry as a whole to deliver mid-to-high single-digit growth during the festival period, and we are seeing that already in the festival-to-date performance,” he told analysts in the company’s earnings call.
“So for us, festival started with Ganesh Festival. You know, there was Onam, there was Ganesh Festival, and so on and so forth. So our festival period actually runs over a 100-day period, and festival to date, the way we are driving our festival performance, we’ve seen growth of 24 per cent,” Chitale said.
“And this, by the way, is also a good way to look at it because it goes right from pre-GST impact to post-GST, otherwise, one gets into this conundrum that right at the start of Navratri last year, the new GST came into effect, and there was a huge amount of pent-up demand that then immediately resulted into sale last year and that will skew the base,” he said.
Chitale said he is looking at mid-to-high single digit growth for the industry in the second half, even with ICE will be in growth with low single digit and EV will take it to a high single digit.
“And as I see in the quarter, in the festival which is a big period, we see that momentum continue,” he said.