The Hindu Business Line : `Bidding for Polaroid will help entry in US markets'

The Chairman and Managing Director of Videocon Industries, Mr Venugopal Dhoot, says Polaroid has right synergy for the company. This will be a good chance for Videocon to enter the US markets, he says.

Excerpts from CNBC-TV18's exclusive interview with him:

Are you indeed in the race for Polaroid and tell us how close are your chances of snapping it up?

Polaroid is a consumer durable company in the US. They are more in liquid crystal display (LCD) manufacturing and distribution activities. They are for sale. According to our strategy, wherever we get some chance of becoming global, we give an aggressive bid for it as we did for Thomson. It is synergy for us. Polaroid is a product that is available even in the smallest town in the US and in all the departmental stores. This is a very well known brand in the US.

Videocon is in India and Europe, but we have not been so successful in America. This is a good chance for us to enter in the US and that is why we are making an aggressive bid for Polaroid.

Could you give us some sense of how big Polaroid is in terms of revenue and what could be the size of the bids since you mentioned an aggressive bid?

I will let you know the size of the bid after sometime because we are working on that. We have already sent our bid to them, but we will disclose that at an appropriate time. At the moment you will know that Polaroid is a very big company having a distribution network across the US and will also have some product displays in the European market.

How close are you to negotiations? Who are the other bidders?

Among other bidders, one will expect LG, Samsung to make a bid for this because it is a very good deal for everybody. But for Videocon, it is synergic. It will not be easy for us going to a US market and it will take 4-5 years to have a market share in the US. If we have Polaroid, we can directly go to the US and we can have our market share there.

What about your previous bids to acquire Daewoo?

We have given information to our merchant banker that Daewoo is on sale and at an appropriate time we will confirm that. To remind you that for Thomson too there was a big bid and McKinsey was also involved. For Thomson, there were six different bidders and because of our aggressive bidding and having a base in India, we got it.

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