Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to the Orient Electric Limited Q2 FY 2026 earnings call hosted by Nirmal Bang Institutional Equities. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star, then zero on your touch-tone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Ms. Arshia Khosla. Thank you and over to you.
Thank you, Iqra. I, Arshia Khosla, on behalf of Nirmal Bang Institutional Equities, welcome all of you to the second quarter FY 2026 earnings call of Orient Electric Limited. From the management, today we have Mr. Ravindra Singh Negi, Managing Director and CEO, Mr. Arvind Vats, CFO, and Mr. Sambhav Jain, Head Investor Relations. I would now request the management to give their opening remarks, post which we shall open the floor for Q&A. Thank you and over to you, sir.
Thank you, Arshia. Good evening, everyone, and a warm welcome to Orient Electric 's Q2 FY 2026 earnings conference call. Thank you for joining, especially given the fact that it is a pre-Diwali weekend. I really appreciate you taking up time late in the evening. Thank you so much. Let me start with a little bit about the quarter. The quarter unfolded against a dynamic and evolving industry background. The government's announcement of sweeping GST reforms, slashing rates across nearly all product categories, marked a marquee step towards simplifying India's indirect tax regime. While these reforms are expected to unlock consumption in H2, particularly in value-driven and premium segments, their rollout created transitional headwinds during the quarter. Anticipation of GST rate cuts led to pricing uncertainty across trade channels for most consumer categories.
While none of our categories were impacted, it had a cash flow or a liquidity issue in the market. This was compounded by the early onset of the monsoons, which dampened demand to a large extent. Despite these, our structural tailwinds remained intact. The festive season began to build momentum towards the end of the quarter, signaling a positive shift in consumer sentiment. Our strategic focus over the recent quarter centered around market expansion and portfolio diversification into emerging categories, translated into a healthy performance for the quarter. Our lighting, switchgear, and wires portfolio delivered strong quarterly revenue, registering a robust 18.6% year-on-year growth, underscoring the success of our strategy. Both switchgears and wires achieved robust growth, while wires more than doubled in year-on-year, however, on a lower base.
This growth was supported by our scaled-up tuition and influencer engagement programs, which are driving brand advocacy and product adoption in these emerging categories. We continue to leverage our well-established fans and lighting ecosystem to enable effective cross-sell, deepening our presence and share across newer segments. Our premiumization focus continued to accelerate in Q2, reflecting our commitment to delivering differentiated, value-driven, and premium offerings. In the consumer lighting, our premium SKUs contributed about 65% of the sales, driven by our expanding portfolio of smart, decorative, and energy-efficient lighting solutions. Despite ongoing price erosion in the lighting category, our premium salience enabled us to implement selective price hikes in the retail lighting. In the fan segment, our share of premium and decorative models improved by almost 500 basis points, led by our feature-rich IoT-enabled BLDC range.
Notably, BLDC grew by 40% year-on-year, contributing to now almost 30% of domestic ceiling fan sales. Our innovation-led growth is underscored by our new product developments, which contributed almost one-third of our fans' revenue this quarter. Supporting this premium push is our retail visibility initiative, Mission Orange, which enables live product displays and creates immersive in-store experiences to influence consumer preferences towards our premium SKUs. Our focused digital engagement and strategic platform partnerships continue to enhance reach and conversion across diverse linguistic and cultural segments. This quarter, we launched a new podcast-styled campaign featuring M S Dhoni and Kusha Kapila, spotlighting our premium and diverse lighting range. The campaign resonated strongly with younger audiences, reinforcing brand affinity and driving engagement. Our refreshed range and improved channel visibility in the e-commerce helped us capture early festive momentum, resulting in a high double-digit growth in the e-commerce channels.
Appliances led the search, supported by strong traction in emerging categories such as irons, which gained incremental momentum. Meanwhile, our core categories like water heaters continue to deliver consistent growth in the e-commerce channels. Our participation in quick commerce platforms covering essential SKUs in fans, irons, and lighting has improved accessibility and responsiveness to evolving consumer buying behavior. During the quarter, we successfully transitioned the Pune market from master distributor to direct-to-market. With this, our DTM footprint continues to expand rapidly in expanding markets, reinforcing our commitment to deeper market penetration and agile distribution. Despite seasonal headwinds in the fans category, DTM-led markets demonstrated resilience, registering single-digit growth and validating the long-term potential of the model. In parallel, we continue to scale our direct service capabilities. Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh were added to our direct service network, enhancing customer experience through faster response times and more efficient last-mile service delivery.
These initiatives are aligned with our broader strategy to strengthen operational agility and build a future-ready distribution and service ecosystem. Moving on to the financials, Orient Electric delivered a resilient performance in Q2 FY 2026. Our consolidated revenue grew by 6.4% year-on-year to INR 703 crore, led by strong momentum in emerging categories. Our lighting and switchgear segment led the growth curve, posting an 18.6% year-on-year increase, driven by continued distribution expansion and a sharpened focus on premium products. Within that, our lighting business delivered an industry-leading performance, highlighting the success of our premiumization strategy. On the professional lighting front, we recorded double-digit growth, fueled by a successful execution of key projects in street lighting and facade segments. A strong pipeline, coupled with rising project inquiries and onboarding of new authorities, positioned us well for sustained growth in the coming quarters.
The ECD segment remained flat, reflecting resilience despite seasonal softness. Fans continue to gain market share, supported by the expansion of our DTM footprint. Year to date, we've gained a market share by almost 60 basis points. The gross margin for the quarter stood at 31.5%, supported by our strategic investments in product optimization and channel strategy. Operationally, Project Sanchay remained central to our efficiency agenda and has contributed meaningfully to cost savings of INR 24 crore in H1. Our EBITDA rose 6.4% year-on-year to INR 38 crore, with an EBITDA margin of 5.4%. Our profits after taxes were up by 15.5% year-on-year to INR 12 crore. Our performance reaffirms our balanced approach towards growth with profitability. Looking ahead, we remain optimistic about the second half of the year.
The festive season buildup, coupled with improving retail sentiment and normalization of channel inventory across the industry, is expected to drive stronger demand momentum. With regulatory developments like BEE Star ratcheting for fans effective January 2026, premium and energy-efficient categories are poised for accelerated adoption in the years to come. Supported by a strategic focus on category expansion and enhanced operational leverage, we strongly believe Orient Electric is well positioned to outpace industry growth. With these remarks, we would like to now open the floor for your questions. Thank you.
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touch-tone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use headsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question is from the line of Dhruv Jain from Ambit Capital. Please go ahead.
Hi, sir. Thanks for the opportunity. Sir, I have two questions. First question is on the lighting segment in which, in the presentation, you mentioned that the wires business has doubled year-on-year. I just want to understand how many states are you working right now with your wires and what's the plan ahead in FY 2026 and 2027? Also, if you can throw some light as to what's the contribution of wires as a proportion of this entire segment?
Hi, Dhruv. Thank you for the question and thank you for asking the question on wires because typically we always get questioned on fans only. This is a new segment, emerging segment, as we've said. We've now rolled out in our stronger markets in the North and in the East. There are some markets in the South also. By and large, it's a graded, gradual rollout across the country and then deeper rollout within the states. Width and depth will be very gradual that we do. We don't give a breakup of lighting and switchgear and wires separately, but it's on a smaller base, but it's doubled up. More importantly than the doubling of the revenue or this thing is the acceptability and a good response in the markets that we've launched is what we're getting. What we are doing is to leverage our fans channel for wires also.
Typically, 40% of the fans dealers stock wires. If you flip it around, if you look at the big wire dealers, 80% of them stock fans. In fans, we have a strong presence, strong brand affinity, strong trade equity, and that's giving us a leverage in terms of placement. As we move on, we'll be able to get deeper distribution and an advantage on it. It's a business which is emerging for us, but we're seeing some nice green shoots in the category.
I'm wondering, the lighting segment, we've seen your margins have declined Q2 and year-on-year. There is a very strong growth on a year-on-year basis, but just if you could throw some light on the margins for the lighting segment.
As I said, you know, there are two things which have been happening. Fundamentally, in the industry, there's been a pricing pressure that has happened. Typically, Q2-Q3, the pricing pressure gets split depending on when is Diwali. This time, Diwali being a little preponed, the industry has seen a little bit of pricing discounting that has gone in Q2, whereas it has translated into high volume growth. For us, because we focused on the premium, it's given us high value growth also. We've grown handsomely in the consumer lighting segment, with high double-digit growth. Fundamentally, structurally, we don't see any issue in the long term in terms of margins in lighting. However, my belief is that the rate of price erosion is plateauing, and we should start seeing some flattening of price erosion to happen for the industry there.
Since we've gained the—sorry, sorry, Dhruv, just to add, on the lighting, especially in the consumer lighting, we've gained market share continuously now for the seventh quarter. Our market shares have moved up by almost 70, 80 basis points.
That's good to hear, sir. That's certainly good to hear, sir. My first question is on the ECB side, specifically to fans. If you could just call out what's the inventory level that you have with respect to fans and with the channel, and with the upcoming regulatory change that is expected, what's the kind of price hikes do you have to take? If you could also speak about the other summer-centric category, what's the inventory level, for example, coolers, etc., and how we should think about that going forward through the year. Thank you so much.
Yeah. I'll just split your question into two parts: the cooling category, largely on the fan side and on the cooler side. Let me first address the questions on fans. I think we all know the average rainfall across the country, and we've looked at region by region. Except for East and Northeast, the average rainfall across Q2 and for the full year has been much higher than last year. In North, which is a very strong market for us, West, South has been absolutely crazy on rain. That's dampened the entire momentum, which was supposed to be built up for fans. In spite of these headwinds and other things, we've registered a positive growth. While it's a low single-digit growth, we would be among the few in the industry who have grown on fans.
On the star ratcheting, I hope all of you are aware that Star ratcheting is only happening on the ceiling fans, and the TPW is not going to go through the star ratcheting. It is going to get into mandatory star rating next year. On the fans, in the last six months, the trade has brought down their inventory levels. As far as we are concerned, we've been very mindful of the transition to the star ratcheting. Our inventory levels have gone up on the TPW side, which is non-ceiling fans, which we believe that Q4 onwards, when the season starts to come in, it should normalize.
On the cooler side, it's been a washout Q1, and typically in Q2, after a good Q1, the trade starts to start picking for the next season. The cooler segment has seen about a - 80% for us, and I'm sure the industry is going to be like that only. On the last question on your ratcheting-led pricing, if I were to normalize and keep the commodity pricing constant, I think the price hike that the industry should look at should be about 3%- 4%. Unlike the first time when non-star to star rated happened, the price increase was huge. This time it should be about 3%- 4%, but it all depends on how the commodity and, if LME continues to be the way it is right now, the hikes could be very different.
Thanks for this, sir. Those were my questions, and Happy Diwali to you and everyone at Orient .
Thank you, Dhruv, and wishing you and everyone and your family a very Happy Diwali.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Bhargav from Ambit Asset Management. Please go ahead.
Good evening, team, and congratulations on a good performance. Sir, my first question is that, now that the Hyderabad facility has been commissioned, is there any strategy that we've sort of designed to focus on South India and, in particular, Tamil Nadu, where our market share is very low and clearly that market is a very large market as far as the cooling products are concerned? If you can briefly highlight any roadmap which you have designed to sort of increase the market share in South and in particular, Tamil Nadu. That's my first question.
Thank you, Bhargav. I'll write these last questions. I think we all know there are two big markets which influence the FMEG category. Both Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu put together, depending on category to category, would range from a 20% to a 25% contribution to the overall. Tamil Nadu is key. There is one large player which has a strong market share. Hyderabad is a facility which is state of the art. Unfortunately, there's been a very soft season, but our facility to produce TPW of a high quality is there. Given the fact that in Hyderabad, our speed and agility to service the market, our logistic cost, when, hopefully, for the next season, will be much sharper, much better. In Tamil Nadu, obviously, you know, it's an MD state. We have a very strong relation in the MD state, strong legacy relation that we have with the trade there.
Hopefully, because this year, the season dropped badly and the impact got on TPW, which is, you know, 60% of the TPW gets sold in South only. That got impacted much more than other categories. Hopefully, next year, next season, we should be able to come back and give you some positive news on market shares gain in Tamil Nadu. Just to give you a little sense, our market share gains are happening in South. You know, if you look at Karnataka, if you look at Telangana, if you look at AP, these are DTM markets where we've seen market share gains happening.
Great. Secondly, sir, now that our portfolio is also fairly complete with the launch of wires and hence we are seeing switchgears also sort of doing well after a very long time. Obviously, on the EBITDA margin doubling, you had mentioned that it will take six, seven quarters. Now that some momentum is getting built up, plus you are saying that there could be some price hike starting January, is there any change in that guidance for, especially I've also looked at your fixed cost, which is flat year-on-year. Is there any change, or you still stick to the fact that it will take about six, seven quarters for the margins to be in the double-digit category?
Look, you know, Bhargav, when I gave the guidance of, you know, I said about six to eight quarters, this was Q4 end. We were anticipating a better summer. Given the fact that Feb-March of this year, the average temperatures were higher than the previous year average temperatures, everybody was a little bullish about a great summer to come in. I don't see fundamentally, structurally, anything which could not, which would come in our way to, you know, move towards the double-digit margin. We are confident, and typically for us, you know, the H2 is a better quarter because 55% of our top line comes from there. While top line has a lot of factors that determine, especially headwinds like season and all, we worked, and thank you for noticing that we worked very hard on keeping our cost structures, bringing a sense of frugality in the organization.
That part is there. I think, with some of the emerging categories coming in, we should see operating leverage to come in. Right now, we would like to continue and maintain the same guidance.
Lastly, sir, there's been some increase in working capital to about 32 days. On a full-year basis, should we assume that it will be fairly in check, given that the same quarter last year is about 19 days?
Yeah, sure. There's been a little bit of inventory buildup, which, look at, I spoke about cooling categories. Typically, we don't carry this kind of an inventory for TPW around this time. We don't carry air coolers inventory around this time. Even for ceiling fans, it's been slightly higher than what we would have ideally anticipated or year-on-year. In the next two quarters, we should be able to normalize this. Even for lighting category, because the season and Diwali is slightly more earlier, I had to build up my inventories and not miss out on any market opportunities in lighting. Some of these are transitional. Some of these should get corrected in the next two quarters.
Great, sir. Thank you very much for answering the questions, and I wish you and your entire team a very Happy Diwali.
Thank you, Bhargav, and wishing you and everybody at home a very Happy Diwali.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Arshia Khosla from Nirmal Bang Institutional Equities. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, thanks for taking my question. Sir, my question is on the ECD part of the business. Have we taken any price hikes during the quarter? If yes, then what would be the quantum? My second question would be on the lighting side. If you could just give the volume breakup in the B2B and B2C part of lighting.
Arshia, thanks. Thanks for the question. Given the softness, I wish we could have taken a price increase much earlier in the quarter. Towards the end in September, we did take a price increase in fans. It was in the tune of, on average, about 1.5% averaged out for the category, fans. It did give a little bit of cushion against the commodity rise. The second question you asked was on the lighting split between. We still have a large dependency on the ceiling side. We are typically around 75/ 25. Hopefully, we should look at some of the leaders in the industry who sit at about 60/ 40. While we are gaining our momentum on the B2B side of the lighting, we want both to grow. Obviously, there's base effect and opportunities in B2B and in cross spending that the government is doing.
We should move towards a far more balanced B2B and B2C.
Got it. Thanks, sir. Any quantum on the volume growth that we've seen?
It's all double-digit. Price erosion continues to happen. Volumes, to me, are, in a way, I would say I don't get excited with volume growth. The only thing that keeps telling me about the volume growth in lighting is that the lighting touchpoints in a household or lighting touchpoints in the country, or to say that India is an underlit country, is the opportunity which sits there. Even if the price erosion stops and even if the volume starts to come down a little bit, I still see huge potential. There are some structural changes or structural corrections in the industry that need to happen, and we are very bullish on lighting as a business.
Got it. Thank you, sir. That's helpful. Wishing you and your team a happy Diwali.
Thank you, Arshia. Happy Diwali to you too.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Rachna Kukreja from Securities Investment Management Private Limited. Please go ahead.
Hello. Am I audible?
Yes, you're audible.
Yes, sir.
Thank you for the audible.
Yes, you are welcome.
Sir, I wish to commentary on gross margins. You said we have made some product portfolio changes and the channel-related initiatives. Sir, if you could provide more on that, this will be my first question.
Rachna, my gross margin is at 31.5%. Typically, we are given a guidance of about 32%- 34%, and the last four quarters, we've been at about 32%, 32.5%. This one quarter is a blip, largely inventories, fixed cost of factories, all that. We remain in that guidance of 32%- 34%, which I call, if you were to look at industry peers, it's a right gross margin to work at, given the categories that we deal in.
Okay. My second question would be about our DTM strategy. As you mentioned, DTM states have seen a single-digit growth. If we see from a long-term perspective from those years since we have started or transitioned into DTM, how have we seen market share gains across our key DTM states? How has the revenue mix improved accordingly? Considering that in our earlier calls, we had shared that around 70% of the revenue comes from MD and 30% from DTM, more color on the market share gains in DTM states and the revenue mix would be helpful. Following on that, as we expand via the DTM model across states, has the transition time reduced, leading to faster recovery of market share and improved execution versus our initial rollout in our initial states like Bihar and Odisha? Are these improvements?
Can I answer the question?
Okay.
Yeah.
Hello.
So.
Yeah, can I continue?
Can I answer the question?
I'm sorry.
I said you want to ask something. Do you want me to first answer DTM questions, and maybe then you can add the part?
Okay. Okay.
As we speak, we've transitioned 12 states and one market, Pune market, which consists of almost 12 districts. That's what we've transitioned. Even in my earlier calls and everything, we've said we will maintain a hybrid model. What are we solving for? We are solving for market share, quality of distribution, depth of distribution, our alignment to the premiumization side, and obviously, service. Any market which continues to work on these parameters and keeps delivering, we will continue with the MD model. Wherever we see an opportunity, we evaluate, evolve, and then take a decision. Pune is one market which has 12 districts plus Goa. We felt that we could potentially do more here given the consumer preference and the consumer market shares that we have. Otherwise, both DTM and MD markets and some of our strong MD markets got very much impacted by heavy rains and seasonality.
The DTM markets were obviously low on market shares, but we've seen a consistent gain. We've seen almost 100 basis point gain coming from our market share there. That mix is now moving towards a little bit of two-thirds, one-third. Does it answer all your DTM? Transition time when we started was very huge. We now feel that on a good listing, it could be 45- 60 days that we can do a transition. As a philosophy, we always take care of our partners. We don't want their inventories, their capital to be stuck in the market, and that's how we do it. Yes, obviously, in the transition, you lose a couple of, kind of, some bit of market savings that you lose. In all markets where we've done the transition, we lose, we dip on the salience, but we come back very fast.
The muscle memory of the brand in some of these markets is very strong.
Okay, if you could provide us with an example.
Racha, I'm sorry, we cannot give you specific DTM by DTM listing, but obviously, I'm just giving you a larger perspective that these are sensitive information from our markets.
Okay. My one last question was, how is the rate of premiumization and growth in other categories within ECDs? We see air coolers and water heaters. You mentioned in your commentary that they have seen good traction over the e-commerce channels. If we look up in channels apart from e-commerce, how has our approach been there towards growing these categories? What are our initiatives to replicate the kind of growth we have seen in fans?
Rachna, it's a very balanced approach that you're looking at. The moment you shift from channel to being consumer-centric, you will get all your answers. They're saying, what is it the consumer is looking at and what is it the consumer wants? If you're doing the journey of premiumization, you look at consumers slightly differently. Today, a consumer's discovery starts to happen digitally. Some of the consumers move from discovery to a purchase digitally. A large part of the consumers get influenced by digital, understand the product reviews, and then they pick from offline. If you look at it, it has to be a consumer-first thinking. In the last call, I said, you know, as an organization, we're changing and think, how do we become far more consumer-centric?
We've started a program called Samvad, which is where all of us listen to consumer calls, consumer feedback, and pick nuances which we can then take back, change our process, change our product. We're keeping that approach. Channel is a medium that the consumer will choose. We work on both sides. You know, say in the BPM or in the MD, when you go offline, we do enough and more at the offline market to grow the channel while we do enough and more on the e-com to influence the consumers in their buying decisions.
Okay.
Got it. I hope that answers.
Yes, yes, understood. That's very helpful. One last question. What would be a spend order book size for B2B lighting and the split between B2C and B2B? Also, what do we consider while selecting a B2B lighting project in order to protect lighting margins?
I did speak about our B2B and B2C at a 75.5% split, while I fundamentally believe some of the leaders in the category sit at 60%, 40%. That's an aspiration, one which at some day we should give a guidance on. We always look at all our B2B projects from the filter of margins and all. Those are, depending on the volume, the payback period, the other thing, those are case-to-case basis that we do.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you, Rachna. Happy Diwali to you.
Happy Diwali. Happy.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Aniruddha Joshi from ICICI Securities. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thanks for the opportunity. Sir, two questions. This entire last six months have been extremely turmoil for the entire summer product industry. If you can share, in these tough times, what has been the performance in terms of the market share in fans as well as the coolers? What it was, what was the performance, let's say, at the end of December quarter? Now, where are we in the, let's say, market sales across regions also? If you can indicate, that will be better. Second and last question, if you can indicate in terms of the commodity prices have started, have started, they have been inching upward. What is the plan to pass on the additional cost pressures? Yeah. Thanks.
Thank you, Aniruddha, for the questions. On fans, we subscribe to a third-party data, and we look at it every quarter. On a YTD basis, if we were to look at it, we've gained our market share by 60 basis points. Both our MD markets and the DTM markets have gained market share. There have been some opportunities in some of the markets. Those will always remain. By and large, we've gained market share across the country. On the coolers, we don't subscribe to a third party, and hence, for me to give you any market share data would be not correct. In an industry which has declined, I think the fair question would be to come back and say, what are the growths and what are the declines? That's how we are on it. On the commodity pricing, yes, you're right. The LME has gone up.
Typically, around this time, festive time, the commodity prices go up. We are very hopeful that it softens. Our whole philosophy is that if it doesn't come down, at some point, we will pass on to the consumers.
Sir, it will result in double size hikes because one, due to the commodity prices, inflation, and secondly, due to the BEE norms, which will also get triggered in January. The industry, which is already facing so many issues, do you see price hikes upwards of 7%, 8% would get easily absorbed?
See, firstly, I don't think 6%, 7% or whatever you said could be absorbed. There are two things that I would say. Industries got impacted because of a soft summer. That doesn't mean that the next summer is also going to be soft.
Correct. Right.
Our whole, when the trade starts to buy between November to February, they buy on anticipation of a good summer. These are risk appetites that each channel, each company will do. In terms of ratcheting, in terms of price increase, in terms of inflation, our endeavor would be to rationalize in a way that it doesn't impact our volumes. We'll do that volume value evaluation. Ratcheting is still three months away, and hopefully, we should be able to see some softening in commodity is what I'm thinking. If not, as I said, we will try and pass on what best we can pass on without losing the competitive edge in the market.
Oh, sir, this is very helpful. The entire team is very happy about it. Thank you.
Thank you, Aniruddha, and Happy Diwali to you and everybody in the family.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchstone telephone. Next question is from the line of Natasha Jain from PhillipCapital. Please go ahead.
Thank you for the opportunity, sir. Congratulations on a good set of numbers. Given that some of your larger peers have come out with their numbers, your performance is definitely resilient compared to peers, especially on the non-fan category. The growth has been quite good. Congratulations on that. Just one question on heaters. What we've picked up from our feedback on the channel is that heaters probably see a slight bit of price cut. Is that something that you are also seeing? Given that we are a very strong player in heaters, especially on the e-commerce side, do you think that could negatively impact us or that we are shielded from that price cut?
Natasha, I just missed out for a second. What did you say on the price of water heaters and geezers?
We're picking up that there is a slight bit of price cut at the primary level on water heaters. Given that we are a stronger player in water heaters, are we also seeing any kind of similar pressure?
See, I'll tell you, you know, when you look at, typically, and I don't know where you did, Natasha, the channel check. If you do a channel check in the north, from April till about August, there is a graded discount that people get to preponing and buying it before the actual season starts to happen, which is now from a consumer offtake perspective. If you do a channel check in west, it'll be April to June. July onwards, the instant and other categories start to come. If you go to south, the period is then from April to, say, August only. Depending on where, I think the entire industry does a graded discounting. Is it higher than the previous years? To a slight degree, but I don't think so. October, November onwards, when the consumer offtake is at its peak, people reduce the discounting.
Hopefully, with so much of conversation around La Niña effect, we should see some bit of water heaters and room heaters, you know, see a little bit of more traction, Natasha.
That's helpful, sir. Thanks for segregating it geography-wise. That's all from my end. Happy Diwali to you and your team, sir.
Natasha, happy Diwali to you too and everybody in the family.
Thank you, sir.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchstone telephone. As there are no further questions from the participants, I now hand the conference over to management for closing comments. Thank you and over to you.
Thank you, everyone, for coming on the call, especially given the fact that I said it's a Diwali weekend, a little late call from us. I really appreciate your time. We really love the questions and the push that you all give us, which keeps us on our toes. Thank you for the encouragement on the good results, resilient results, I would say, from Orient . Wishing all of you a very happy Diwali, wishing all of you and your family a very happy and a prosperous Diwali. Thank you. Have a great weekend. Have a great festive. Let's stay connected. Thank you so much.
Thank you, sir. On behalf of Orient Electric Limited, hosted by Nirmal Bang Institutional Equities, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.