- lead - BPL is a company built on a single manufacturing skill - making the flat green boards that connect every electronic component inside a device - which it has practised since 1989 with technical roots from Sanyo of Japan. After more than five decades selling televisions and appliances under its own name, the company made a defining choice in 2020: it entered into an exclusive brand licence agreement with Reliance Retail, turning a manufacturing-and-trading business into a royalty stream alongside its PCB manufacturing. The recurring approach is to own the hard industrial step - fabricating the Printed Circuit Board - while letting India’s largest retailer carry the consumer brand into millions of homes, so that one engine funds the other’s upgrade into higher-technology layers.
Business segments
Two engines at different stages - a printed-circuit-board factory being retooled for multi-layer precision work, and a consumer brand that earns a royalty on every television, refrigerator and mixer-grinder sold by India’s largest electronics retailer - each built on the same five-decade name.
1. Printed Circuit Boards: the factory that makes the skeleton of every electronic product
A single plant near Bangalore fabricates bare boards for automotive, power and LED customers, and is now shifting from low-value single-sided volumes to double-sided and multi-layer boards with cleaner-room precision.
- The plant is a three-decade asset - established in 1989 with technical assistance from Sanyo, Japan, the Doddaballapur factory makes single-sided, double-sided and multi-layer PCBs entirely in-house, giving it a location advantage for serving automotive and electronics clusters in South and Western India.
- Certified to sell into car dashboards - the factory holds IATF 16949 and Maruti Centre for Excellence (MACE) certifications, which are mandatory for supplying PCBs to the automotive electronics industry, so it can reach tier-1 and tier-2 suppliers to Maruti Suzuki and other vehicle makers.
- Exiting the low-end to go up the layer stack - during FY 2024-25 the company deliberately walked away from low-value PCB segments and installed a new double-side production line with a Class 100k clean room, targeting higher-value work such as energy meters, solar heaters, IoT power supplies and EV chargers. It is now expanding into multi-layer boards of up to 14 layers.
- Precision tools, not commodity lines - the upgraded facility runs computer-controlled drilling and routing machines at 200,000 rpm, a fully automated printing line with 5-micron accuracy, and 100% electrical testing on BBT and FPT machines, so every board is checked before it leaves.
- Raw materials are the pinch point - most PCB raw materials, including copper-clad laminates, are not available in India and must be imported, so the company keeps alternate sourcing from Taiwan and Thailand as a mitigant for the China border conflict geopolitical risk.
2. Brand licensing: a royalty on the BPL name, sold through India’s largest electronics retailer
BPL no longer makes or sells a single television or washing machine - it earns a fee from Reliance Retail, which puts the BPL badge on over 220 product types and sells them across more than 8,000 outlets.
- A brand, not a factory - since February 2020, an exclusive agreement lets Reliance Retail trade BPL-branded consumer electronics and durables through its own stores, distribution networks and online platform, while BPL Limited monitors quality and collects a royalty based on actual sales, with a minimum guarantee built in.
- The distribution reach is national and instant - Reliance Retail runs India’s largest consumer electronics chain with over 8,000 outlets, 304 million registered customers and more than a billion footfalls in a year, so BPL products sit in Reliance Digital and MyJio stores across metros and tier-2 and tier-3 cities without BPL spending on retail infrastructure.
- The catalogue runs from TVs to toasters - the brand covers LED televisions, refrigerators, air conditioners, washing machines, small kitchen appliances, personal grooming gadgets, audio equipment, fans, geysers and air coolers, with over 220 stock-keeping units and more than 12.5 million units sold in a single year.
- Smart TVs drive the volume - nearly 95% of television sales come from smart models, with 32-inch and 43-inch screens taking the bulk of the share, and the brand ranks among the top five Indian names in LED televisions.
- “Make in India” sentiment in smaller cities - the brand is positioned in the mid-to-premium category with features on par with multinationals, and retailer feedback describes it as one of the stronger Indian brands capable of selling alongside global names, especially in tier-2 and tier-3 markets.
Group structure and partners
The company sits above two power-generation subsidiaries that have yet to start commercial operations, and its sole commercial partner is the retailer that carries its consumer brand.
- Two dormant power vehicles - BPL holds more than 75% of Bharat Energy Ventures Private Limited, an NBFC formed as a special-purpose vehicle for a power generation business, which in turn owns Ramagundam Power Generation Private Limited; neither entity has recorded material revenue or commenced commercial operations.
- Reliance Retail is the brand’s exclusive licensee - the exclusive licensing agreement makes Reliance the retailer of BPL-branded products through its own stores, its distribution network and its own online platform, with BPL earning a royalty on every unit sold.
- A legacy joint venture being wound down - the erstwhile joint venture Kleer Industries Inc. in the USA has been inoperative for a long period and is in the process of being closed.