Onida is a 44-year-old Indian consumer-electronics company built on a single idea - understanding what Indian homes and Indian climates actually need - and it has turned that into a brand that competes with global giants by designing products specifically for local conditions, from air conditioners that work at 58°C to washing machines with a world-first bristle-wash tub. It was founded by Gulu Mirchandani, a BITS Pilani engineer who later led the industry’s trade body, and the company has stayed independent, listed, and without subsidiaries for its entire life. The recurring approach is to own the brand, the R&D, and the factories - it runs three plants and an in-house design centre in Mumbai - so it can control both the product and the cost, whether it is selling under its own Onida name or building televisions for someone else’s label.
Business segments
Three engines at different stages - a branded consumer-durables platform built on Indian-specific design, a contract-manufacturing business that fills the same factories, and a small mobile-device operation - all fed by a shared manufacturing backbone.
1. Onida branded consumer electronics: the flagship that designs for Indian reality
Every product is engineered for the way Indians live - super-tropical heat, hard water, large families, and aspirational budgets - and sold through a network that reaches 19,000 pincodes.
- Designed for Indian extremes - the air conditioners are built for super-tropical conditions up to 58°C and deliver 100% rated cooling even at 43°C, while washing machines include a first-in-class rotary brush with bristles inside the tub to scrub out tough stains from Indian fabrics.
- A full kitchen-and-home catalogue - the portfolio spans seven categories: LED TVs, air conditioners, washing machines, refrigerators, microwaves, air coolers, and dishwashers, with the dishwasher range designed specifically for Indian kitchens at 12- and 14-place capacities.
- A second brand for rural India - the IGO brand, launched in 2002-03, targets rural segments separately, so Onida can reach aspirational middle-class buyers in tier-3, tier-4, and tier-5 towns without diluting the main brand.
- After-sales brought in-house - the company stopped outsourcing service and now runs its own pan-India network with a custom CRM called E-Serve, which helped push its customer-service Net Promoter Score to 80%.
- Smart TVs as a platform play - Onida was the first in India to launch Fire TV-based 4K UHD televisions, and it has launched Android and Google TV platforms, with its Fire TV models rated highest on Amazon India.
2. Electronic Manufacturing Services: the factory-filling second engine
The same plants that build Onida-branded goods also manufacture televisions, monitors, and washing machines for other brands on contract - turning fixed factory costs into a shared resource.
- OEM and private-label work - the EMS business makes products on a B2B basis for well-known brands and e-commerce players, including a large retailer and an open-cell maker, covering televisions, set-top boxes, audio devices, and washing machines.
- Customer concentration is real - around 60% or more of EMS revenue has historically come from its top two clients, though by FY25 the top ten customers together accounted for about 39% of total company sales.
- Lower margin, but fills capacity - the company has said outright that the branded business carries higher margins than the non-brand EMS business, and that a reduction in EMS work was a reason for inadequate profit in FY25.
3. Mobile communication devices: a small, legacy tail
A minor segment contributing roughly 4% of revenue, with no detailed product or strategy disclosure beyond its existence in the segment mix.
Manufacturing and supply chain: the shared backbone
Three plants with backward-integrated capabilities - TV and AC production at Wada, washing machines at Roorkee - sit close to the port and the Bhiwandi warehousing hub, feeding both the branded and contract-manufacturing engines.
- Wada is the mother plant - it can produce 2.4 million TVs a year and houses plastic injection moulding, SMT lines, open-cell assembly, PCB assembly, a paint shop, an EPS plant for thermocol packaging, and an AC gas-charging line with 750,000-unit capacity.
- Location lowers logistics cost - the Wada factory is less than 100 kilometres from the JNPT sea port and close to the Bhiwandi warehousing cluster, so imported materials and finished goods move cheaply.
- Backward integration within a 50-kilometre radius - the supply chain for key inputs sits inside a tight ring around the facility, and the company has infrastructure ready to expand TV capacity to 3 million units.
- Working-capital heavy by design - the business needs to hold a large basket of SKUs in warehouses across the country, and it runs on roughly 90 days of supplier credit while extending about two months of credit to its distributors.
Group structure and partners
A standalone, listed Indian company with no subsidiaries, run by the founding family alongside professional management and a recently appointed CEO.
- Founding family still at the centre - Gulu Mirchandani, the founder, stepped down as Chairman and Managing Director in May 2025 and became Chairman Emeritus; his son Kaval Mirchandani serves as Whole-Time Director, and his brother-in-law Vijay Mansukhani is Managing Director.
- Professional CEO layer - Vikram Surendran was appointed CEO in April 2023, and in March 2026 the board granted 29.5 million stock options to a new CEO, Gunjan Srivastava, under the employee stock option plan.
- Listed, with negligible foreign ownership - the shares trade on BSE and NSE, and as of March 2025 foreign shareholders held just 0.96% of the equity, mostly NRIs.
- Banking with four lenders - the company’s bankers are State Bank of India, HDFC Bank, IDBI Bank, and Canara Bank.
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