By Rituraj Baruah

New Delhi, Feb 27 (IANS): Global travel gear and luggage maker Samsonite expects its sales to grow 18-20 per cent in India to touch Rs 1,600 crore by the end of 2018.

"For the year 2017, we did around Rs 1,250 crore in sales. Our goal is that we want to grow around 18-20 per cent in 2018, and we should be touching around Rs 1,600 crore," Anushree Tainwala, Executive Director, Marketing, Samsonite South Asia, told IANS over a telephonic interaction.

The Samsonite official said the company commands around 38-40 per cent market share of the Indian market, adding that: "In the next two years we want to achieve 45 per cent of market share here."

Leading with enhancing the capacity of its Nashik facility, the company would invest significantly in design and development in the country, she added.

"Currently, we manufacture around 80,000 pieces (per month) in that facility, our goal is that by June we enhance it upto around 1 lakh pieces and by the end of the year we want to touch 2 lakh pieces," Tainwala said.

For the year 2018, the company's highest focus would be on the Kamiliant brand (low cost suitcase), which was launched in late 2016, according to the executive director.

"In its first year itself we have crossed Rs 100 crore in sales and we want to double its (Kamiliant) sales every year, for the next few years," she said.

Talking about investments in India, Tainwala said: "Kamiliant is a small value segment brand competing at a similar price point as a Skybag, a VIP or a Safari. That honestly is the bulk of the Indian market... So, Kamiliant is where we are going to put in a lot of our investments, as well as American Tourister."

"For American Tourister specifically we got Virat Kohli on board last year as a brand ambassador. In 2018 we have also got Christiano Ronaldo on board," she said.

On the region-wise sales in India, Tainwala said: "The biggest region is south...with around 28 per cent of our sales coming from the south, 24 per cent coming from north, 15 per cent from west, around 11 per cent from east and 14 per cent from e-commerce sale."

Although with the introduction of e-commerce, sales in the brick-and-mortar shops have not seen a dip, but "of course, the growth rate we see in e-commerce surpasses the growth rate we see in other channels today," she said.

"So, a lot of market shares may be e-commerce is taking from other shares," she added.