The company has already firmed up pacts with three manufacturers in Punjab, West Bengal and Maharashtra to increase penetration of its colour televisions, managing director VK Chopra said.

Lack of volumes is the reason why the company had taken the route of contract manufacturing, Chopra said, but declined to divulge the names of the manufacturers.

As per the new plan, the contract manufacturers will buy Thomson's imported colour television kits from Chennai and roll out the finished televisions, which the company will then market in the respective regional territories.Marketing vice-president Rajesh Puri said the company has planned to invest about Rs 200 crore over the next five years at the Chennai manufacturing facility. "In fact, all our future investment is planned for the Chennai plant," Puri said. As the first tranche of the invest plan, the company will invest Rs 20 crore soon for which Credit Lyonnais will give a loan of Rs 13 crore and the City Union Bank Rs 7 crore. The company is a 51:49 joint venture of the $16-billion French multimedia group Thomson and the Chennai-based Diana Vision, set up two years ago.

The chennai plant, where investments are likely to take place, has an installed capacity of 2 lakh sets per annum, and its sales target for the current year is 1.6 lakh sets. The company has broken even in the second year of operations and plans to corner 10 per cent of the competitive colour television market with an aggressive brand building exercise and using sales promotion schemes, Chopra said.

The company, where Thomson has so far invested only Rs 20 crore, will launch a host of new colour televisions as well as a range of audio products. "The company is targeting a Rs 1,000-crore turnover by turn of the century on the back of fresh launches," he said. "We plan to hit a sales turnover of 3.5 lakh sets by the turn of the century," Chopra said.

Besides promotion schemes, the company is increasing the advertising support and has kept aside a budget of nearly Rs 10 crore for the year, he said.