Tell us about yourself and your professional experience?
My name is Hasan Jameel and I completed my B.E. in Electrical Engineering in 1991 from NED University, and afterwards did my MBA from the Institute of Business Administration with majors in Marketing. My overall work experience comprises 18 years and I have been associated with Dawlance for the last nine years and the experience has been really wonderful.

How would you describe dawlance? What is the core business philosophy of dawlance?
Dawlance is a 30 years old company, which started its operations in 1980 by manufacturing refrigerators, and today we are the largest and No.1 home appliances brand of Pakistan in terms of volume and revenue with products like refrigerators, freezers, split ACs, microwave ovens and washing machines. Our core business philosophy revolves around reliability and this is not just a marketing statement but it is our commitment to our valued customers. Through our in-depth consumer researches, we have always opted for relevant solutions that the consumer requires hence giving them relevant and a reliable solution.

How is the marketing environment for the home appliances industry transforming with the passage of time? And how are you responding?
Overall the home appliance industry is getting challenges day by day because of the increase in awareness among the consumers.
I would say that media has played a vital role in increasing the consumer awareness. Now people focus a lot on aesthetics which was not the case when I look back at the time when we had only one TV channel. The consumer has become more knowledgeable about the functionality of the product.
Dawlance has responded to such challenges very well by bringing in relevant products that fulfills Pakistani consumer's needs.

What percentage of the market share in home appliances do local manufacturers have and how much of it belongs to dawlance?
Pakistan is a different market when we compare it with India and Bangladesh, though the consumer habits are similar but in terms of market share the international players have a high market share in other countries unlike Pakistan. Whereas if you look at our country it's all together different, as local manufacturers are dominating and the international players have less than seven per cent of the market share. Dawlance is by far the market leader in refrigerators, microwave ovens and split ACs.

What factors would you attribute to the large market share?
I would say there are lots of factors associated with it, the first and the foremost being the product differentiation which gives us an edge over the competition. Besides that we focus on consumer insight researches, which provide us guidelines to meet our consumer expectation when developing the product.

What is the role of research and development in dawlance?
Dawlance is focusing a lot on R&D, the split AC that we launched last year had a filter clean technology which tells the user when its time to clean the filter. This was something that came up while we conducted the in-depth researches as people have the tendency to forget when to clean the filter hence living in an environment which produces unclean air which affects the health, especially of the asthmatic patients.
Similarly, launch of Dawlance fully automatic washing machine with tilt drum is another example of how we incorporate our consumer's expectation in our product development through R&D.