Tata Chemicals, which sold four lakh units of its Nano water purifier Swach in FY11, hopes to sell a million units this year.

In the fiscal year ending March 2011, Tata Chemicals had failed to meet its sales target of half a million units and ended up with sales that were lower by a fifth. “We are in the process of completing the national rollout of Swach which will ensure easy availability of the product pan India. In fact, we are almost nationally available now across fourteen states excluding the north eastern region,” Sabaleel Nandy, head of water purifier business at Tata Chemicals told Financial Chronicle.

According to the company, supply constraints with its partners who manufacture key plastic parts prevented it from meeting its sales target in the year gone by. “We are doing quite well in Swach as per our internal targets. We have generated a good amount of customer pull and have now put in place a network of seven to eight contract manufacturers all over the country which will allow us to have distributed manufacturing & adequate supply,” said Nandy. Tata Chemicals sources plastic parts for Swach from plastic processors & moulders such as the Supreme group.

To ensure that it meets its sales targets, the company has also launched a website www.tataswach.com where customers can buy a Swach purifier and have it delivered to their homes at no extra cost. “In a number of areas in India, footfalls at kirana outlets reduce by 30-40 per cent in the winter season. Using the online channel we can reach a larger set of customers and overcome the reluctance of customers to move out of their homes in inclement weather,” said Nandy. Tata Swach is presently available in three variants i.e. Tata Swach, Tata Swach Smart and Tata Swach Smart Magic (which has no storage space for filtered water). The price range for the variants ranges between Rs 499-Rs 1,199.

Meanwhile Tata Chemical has hiked prices of its Tata Swach bulb from the launch price of Rs 300 to Rs 349. “Less than 10 million of 220 million households in India use a water purifier. We need to increase awareness of the need to purify drinking water, set up rural distribution channels and reduce the price points further to realise the potential of this market,” said Nandy. He said the firm is working on useful variants using new technology that would come at even lower price points.

At present the company derives almost a third of Swach sales from non-urban areas.