Says Shreekant Somany, managing director, SPL Ltd: ``We foresee a fast growth in the vitrified tiles segment and the tie-up will keep us abreast of developments in the segment and thus give us an edge over our competitors.'' SPL is targeting a turnover of Rs 40 crore from Greviti.

Globally, the vitrified tiles segment has been growing at a rate of 20 per cent over the last three years, accounting for around 10 per cent of tile production. In India, despite there being players - Bell Ceramics, H&R Johnson and Navin Ceramics - already in the market, vitrified tiles account for only 5 per cent of the total 100 million sq mts of installed capacity of ceramic tiles. SPL is chalking out a detailed marketing strategy for Greviti. With a different target group in mind for Greviti, which is a premium product, SPL will set aside 25 distributors from its current 500 exclusively for this product. Twenty per cent of the company's ad budget - which is 4 per cent of turnover - will be devoted to marketing Greviti. With a projected turnover of Rs 175 crore for 1999-2000, the total ad budget should work out to Rs 7 crore, as against Rs 4 crore last year.

The entire marketing effort will be focussed on a different segment - upper middle class, institutions, housing societies, hotels and property brokers. In the renovation market, it will target traditional users of marble (since vitrified tiles have the look and feel of marble, but are non-staining, non-porous and have a longer life span), like restaurants and offices who may graduate to Greviti. Besides advertising in trade and business magazines, it will look at telemarketing and direct selling.

SPL has invested Rs 25 crore in converting part of its Kassar plant in Haryana into a vitrified tile plant to manufacture Graveti. It hopes to increase the initial production capacity from 3000 sq mts a day to 10,000 sq meters a day over the next three years.