Indian hardware tools market analysis

The Indian hardware market has good prospects for increasing demand in downstream areas

Hardware generally refers to metal products, which are auxiliary and accessory manufactured products used in daily life and industrial production. According to the division of use, hardware is divided into tool hardware, building hardware, daily hardware, lock abrades, kitchen and bathroom hardware, furniture hardware, etc. From the perspective of the industrial chain, the upstream of the hardware industry is the supply of raw materials such as iron, aluminum, steel and silver; Hardware industry downstream is the application field, hardware services in the production, life of each key link, a wide range of applications, including construction, house decoration, furniture, home appliances, automobiles and so on.

According to the “2024-2028 Indian Hardware Market Investment Environment and Investment Prospects Assessment Report” released by the New Thinking Industry Research Center, in terms of enterprises, The main production enterprises in the global hardware market are Superstar Technology Co., LTD., Boshen Co., LTD., Makita Co., LTD., the United States Stanley Works. Driven by factors such as population growth and increased demand for infrastructure, it is expected that the global hardware industry revenue scale will reach more than $3240.00 billion in 2028. In terms of the country, the development of China’s hardware industry is more mature, and it is one of the world’s main hardware manufacturing bases. The U.S. hardware store retail market size is about $560.00 billion in 2024 and is expected to reach $71.20 billion in 2029. Thanks to the expansion of demand in downstream areas such as real estate and furniture, the Indian hardware market has considerable prospects.

Hardware is a necessary tool for the construction, decoration and maintenance of the real estate industry, so the growth of hardware market demand is closely related to the development of the real estate market. According to the Real Estate Developers Association of India (CREDAI), the Indian real estate market is expected to reach $1.30 trillion by 2034 and grow to $5.17 trillion by 2047. In addition, the increase in per capita income of the middle class is promoting the development of the Indian furniture market, and furniture hardware is an important part of the connected furniture structure, which is conducive to improving the stability of the furniture structure and the use of safety. According to the “2024 Indian Home Furniture Market” released by Mordor Intelligence, the Indian home furniture market is expected to reach $36.99 billion in 2029, and the compound annual growth rate will be 9.9% during the forecast period.

Guangdong Rongyijia Technology Co., Ltd. is one of the important participating enterprises in the Indian hardware market. Through online customer acquisition and offline transaction models, the company provides local customers with localized and customized services, which has greatly increased the sales of its products in the Indian market. In 2023, the total sales of products of Guangdong Rongyijia Technology Co., Ltd. exceeded 290 million yuan, of which the Indian market was about 110 million yuan.

New Thought India market analysts said that hardware serves all key links of production and life, and has played a positive role in improving the living standards of residents and improving the quality of life. With the continuous expansion of the Indian real estate and household furniture market, hardware as a basic essential product, its market demand will also increase. In addition, the automobile and construction industry is an important pillar industry for the development of India’s national economy, and the demand for hardware accessories is also very strong.

Selling hardware accessories in India, the company’s annual sales exceeded 300 million | sea New Land

With global business in turmoil and upheaval, going to sea has become an unavoidable proposition for many Chinese companies. The overseas population of 6.5 billion people is scattered in nearly 200 countries and regions with extremely uneven development. Navigating this complex market can be much harder than entrepreneurs anticipate or imagine.

Hard Krypton has long paid attention to and observed overseas markets and overseas enterprises, based on this, hard Krypton launched a New column: “New Land”. We will cover developed countries and regions such as Europe, America, Japan and Australia, and also focus on emerging markets such as Southeast Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa.

The column will take the company and product as the core, disassemble the practical operation process of successful companies from a professional perspective, and see the causes and consequences of explosive products in a country or a region. Our higher expectation is that we can gain insight and convey the glimmer of new trends.

When businessman Lin Shaowu first set foot in New Delhi, India, in 2017, he was still surprised by what he saw.

New Delhi is the capital of India and has a population of about 33.8 million, making it the second most populous city in the world. Walking on the road, it was difficult for him to tell by naked eye whether the large number of plastic sheds piled up on the ground were refugee habitats or garbage dumps.

Old and dilapidated infrastructure can be seen throughout the city. But amid the chaos, no one can ignore the vitality of the Indian market. Here, traffic jams are the norm, and upscale neighborhoods stand shoulder to shoulder with slums. In 2017, India’s GDP growth was reported at 7.1%. GDP reached 2.597 trillion US dollars, surpassing France to rank sixth in the world.

At that time, ten years had passed since Lin Shaowu founded Rongyi Family roeasy. roeasy is a company engaged in furniture, door and window hardware accessories export trade, the main products include cabinets and furniture cabinet door hinges, sliding drawer rails and so on.

In the early years, through frequent exhibitions, ground pushing and other ways, Rongyijia has accumulated a group of high-quality customers in many regions such as Asia, Europe, Africa and South America.

He needs to tap into new growth. India, which is building infrastructure, caught Lin Shaowu’s attention. “India’s infrastructure is very poor, just go to an old city in the knock, dust and smoke, in the second reconstruction and upgrading.” But at the same time, we found that the local supply chain capacity was not mature.”

Hardware accessories and building materials market development situation is closely related. In recent years, according to Anarock, home sales in India’s top seven cities reached 476,000 units in 2023, an increase of 31% year-on-year and a new high in the past decade; New car sales in India were also close to 5.08 million units, up 7% from 2022, surpassing Japan for the second consecutive year to rank third in the world. The main pillar industries such as the local construction industry and automobiles have strong demand for hardware accessories.

Since 2017, Lin Shaowu has decisively changed the company’s overseas strategy, focusing on the infrastructure building materials and home decoration market in developing countries with India as the core where infrastructure is weak.

In order to meet the rapid response and delivery needs of local customers in India, Rongyijia adopted the model of online customer acquisition and offline transaction, and set up an overseas warehouse in New Delhi, India, in 2019 to provide localized and customized services based on local market insights.

As it turned out, the Indian market also paid off well for Lin Shaowu. When many industries were affected by the epidemic, Rongyi’s product sales continued to rise, with total sales exceeding 300 million yuan in 2023, and the Indian market alone accounted for 120 million yuan. At present, among the top 100 enterprises in the Indian hardware industry, 80 have reached long-term cooperation with Rongyi Jia, and the localized Indian overseas warehouse service has exceeded 500 small and medium-sized customers.

Running a side store business

It is hard to imagine that a product whose unit price does not exceed 100 yuan per year – hardware accessories – is making a lot of money in India.

Rongyijia’s current customer acquisition channels are mainly composed of two parts, Alibaba International Station and independent station. The target customers are from the B end, including all kinds of hardware buyers, traders, brand owners, and five-star hotels and other construction industry suppliers.

In India, customer needs vary significantly depending on the size of the business. Medium and large customers purchase a large amount, the product packaging will have unique brand requirements, including the development and design of accessories, appearance, performance, and even the number of square holes required for installation. When making payment, such customers are more willing to pay in full directly in US dollars, and customers import products by themselves, and are not willing to choose other settlement methods.

It is more efficient to do business with large clients than to do business with small and complex clients. Lin Shaowu told Hard Krypton that a key criterion for selecting customers in India is “choice over effort.” It is too long to wait for a small customer on a self-employed scale to grow into a large customer. He is more inclined to turn small orders of medium and large customers into large orders.

Partial product drawing

In mid-2022, Lin Shaowu encountered a special inquiry on Alibaba’s international website. The customer came from a listed company in the hardware industry in India, and at first the customer only placed a small order, with a total value of no more than $10,000. After the back adjustment, Lin Shaowu found that although the company was a local listed company, its stock performance was poor in the past three years, and its market value was close to half.

Lin Shaowu judged that the company was established for many years, itself in India’s channels, scale, brand, team and other aspects of strength, the problem is the lack of product strength, the price volume but small and medium-sized retail investors, new products are also lack of market competitiveness.

The other party placed a lot of new products in Rongyi home, which let Lin Shaowu and the team see this single business is expected to “see the big” opportunity.

However, since the previous transactions between the two parties were completed online, the customer had doubts about Rongyi’s product performance, large-scale research and development and production capacity. To this end, at the end of the same year, the first time the epidemic was released, Lin Shaowu invited the other party to visit the factory line of Rong Yi family, and finally reached cooperation with the new product customization service, providing five or six new products.
Canton Fair exhibition picture

Compared with street shops, such enterprises often have mature channels and service capabilities, but because the capacity of India’s own hardware accessories market is relatively weak, the Chinese supply chain can complement their competitiveness in research and development and products.

However, the number of big B customers in India who can afford large orders is still small. According to Lin Shaowu’s rough calculation, among the enterprises that have reached cooperation with Rong Yijia at present, the proportion of medium and large customers is less than 20%, and small and medium-sized customers are also the main source of income.

Small and medium-sized customers scattered in the building materials market, residential areas and restaurants in the surrounding small shops, it is difficult to exhaust. Moreover, their financial strength is weak, in the past in Yiwu, each style to buy a maximum of 5 to 100 pieces, two to three orders a year, each order number of hundreds of product categories, can not form a whole order. These customers often directly face the C-end consumers, the pursuit of high quality and low price.

Therefore, small customers in India have little demand in terms of product branding, logo, packaging, etc., but they attach great importance to rapid delivery capabilities, requiring spot transactions, spot sales, and offline transactions with rupees.

This also puts forward extremely high requirements for Rongyi family in terms of establishing channels and operating capabilities. First, to achieve rapid response, shorten the delivery cycle; Second, some small and medium-sized enterprises in India often do not have customs clearance and trade import and export capabilities, for this part of customers, need to provide delivery channels, can achieve door-to-door services; Third, for some small and medium-sized customers who have the need to design exclusive label model packaging, light customization functions should be provided.

For this part of the customer, Rong Yi family set up overseas warehouse. They have also become the key to gaining a foothold in the Indian market.

Two overseas warehouses, annual sales of 120 million

In New Delhi and Mumbai, India, there are many professional hardware accessories markets, each market covers thousands of small and medium-sized customers.

This batch of customers do not have a system of product and technical supporting service capabilities, in 2019, Lin Shaowu cooperated with local agents and officially opened an overseas warehouse in India to do a good job of localization services and meet the differentiated needs of small and medium-sized B-side customers.
Indian overseas warehouse

Lin Shaowu said that due to the large capital occupation of goods in overseas warehouses, the cost of early purchase and signing is high, so stable order support is needed. There must also be a deep sense of mutual trust in the chosen custodian.

Rongyi home has a list of Indian national products, the current hot products full container (refers to sea containers) transport to New Delhi or Mumbai warehouse for stock, and complete customs clearance and tax payment. Subsequently, small and medium-sized customers only need to pay online through independent stations and other channels to pick up goods in New Delhi and Mumbai, and the overall delivery cycle has been shortened from the original 30-40 days to 1-7 days.

At the same time, in the transportation process, Rongyi Jia cooperates with lighting, lighting fittings, luggage and other large volume dumping manufacturers to provide DDP business (Delivered Duty Paid, designated destination delivery after tax) to help these enterprises to ship products to India.

For example, in the normal transportation process, not every order will be fully loaded, assuming a total of 68 tons of loading space, their own hardware accessories only 20 tons, the remaining 48 tons of space can undertake orders from other manufacturers.

“The price of this part of the business is cheaper than the manufacturers to load the cabinet themselves.” Not only to serve their own business, but also to provide logistics and transportation services for customers related to other industries. In this way, the overall freight is also saved, a win-win situation.” Lin Shaowu told hard Krypton.

In 2023, the total sales of Rongyi family exceeded 300 million yuan, and the revenue of the Indian market was 120 million yuan, of which only a single overseas warehouse and sales exceeded 60 million yuan. At present, the number of small and medium-sized customers who have reached cooperation with Rongyijia through overseas warehouse transactions is about 500, and they maintain business contacts every quarter.
Looking for new opportunities in the Middle East
Since the outbreak of the epidemic, Lin Shaowu has not been to India for several years, so he has applied for a visa to go to India since the first time. However, due to a variety of factors on the Indian side, the visa for China has not been developed, and in the past two years, Lin Shaowu has still not been able to travel, and visits and cooperation with many offline customers have been delayed.

At the same time, due to local policies and other relevant regulations and systems, this has brought certain challenges to many entrepreneurs.

One of the most immediate effects is that India is initiating a number of anti-dumping investigations against Chinese companies in some light industries. Rongyi home, as an exporter in the subdivision field, is one of the 28 domestic anti-dumping response enterprises, and is currently actively preparing relevant responses. In addition, there are some problems with the Indian BIS standard certification, which is also affecting Rongyi’s business development in India.

International trade barriers continue to increase, which makes Lin Shaowu have to re-examine, the hardware accessories industry in the next decade should go in which direction.

A few days ago, Lin Shaowu visited more than a dozen agents in the Middle East, and the market reaction was optimistic as far as the research results were concerned.

In the Middle and post-oil era, the Middle Eastern countries represented by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar are currently actively looking for the transformation of the entire national state-owned economy, gradually shifting from the oil economy to tourism, finance, entertainment and residence. Among them, Saudi Arabia proposed in the “Vision 2023” that it will invest 500 billion US dollars to build “NEOM” future cities, which will bring great opportunities to the local building materials market.

On the one hand, the Middle East in the hardware accessories industry is relatively weak, has not yet appeared the head of the hardware brand manufacturers, but gathered a group of construction enterprises, industrial links are very different. With the strong domestic supply chain advantages, the backward Chinese manufacturers are expected to quickly occupy the high ground in the tuyere.

On the other hand, Rongyijia export trade early, after years of development, its products in the Middle East precipitated a certain degree of recognition; In the four or six line cabinet stores visited in Dubai, you can see a lot of Rongyi products.

At present, the annual sales of Rongyijia in the Middle East region have exceeded 30 million. Lin Shaowu told hard Krypton that Rongyi will focus on the channel layout in the Middle East and increase the number of local brand agents; At the same time, strengthen the brand’s marketing ports in Saudi Arabia, Dubai, ABU Dhabi and other regions. “We hope that by the same period next year, Rongjia will have doubled its revenue in the Middle East.”

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