Viveks Ltd., popularly known as Viveks & Co., South India’s pioneering consumer electronics chain founded in 1965, shuts all stores after 61 years as mounting financial pressure and intense competition from national retailers and e-commerce platforms bring a six-decade retail legacy to a close.
One of South India’s most iconic retail names has fallen silent. Viveks, the Chennai-based consumer electronics chain, has shut all its stores after 61 years.
Former employees say this is just a pause, and the showrooms are getting renovated. The spokesman requested anonymity.
Founded in 1965 by B.A. Lakshmi Narayana Setty in a modest 10×10 sq ft shop in Mylapore, the brand grew steadily into a beloved Tamil Nadu institution and also expanded to neighbouring Karnataka during the late 90s.
Under B.A. Kodandaraman Setty, who took over after the founder passed away, the chain expanded to 48 showrooms, with revenues touching INR 450 crore and over 1,000 employees.
Viveks was the first CDIT retailer in India to set shop inside a mall, circa 2004 at Bangalore Central. It was also the year when it’s first air-conditioned outlet was opened.
The former CEO, Mr. Setty said back then, “Our value proposition was to offer competitive prices to consumers. An a/c showroom meant incremental overheads, so we stayed off as long as we could managing with ceiling fans.”
The brand pioneered the New Year Sale concept — pre-dawn consumer queues became legend, the format was widely copied, and a retail tradition was born across India.
Mr. Setty had once said, “We wanted to offer Zero margin products to our customers on the 1st calendar day of the year, so we began this practice in the early 90s. It became a hit initially, and over time, the industry norm.”
According to news reports, some of the former showrooms are being taken over and refurbished by Vasanth & Co., a competitor chain with over 150 stores in the state.
Ironically, Late Mr. Vasanth Kumar was a staff at Vivek & Co. 5 decades ago! His daughter and sons are now scaling and driving the business towards new heights, focussing on Tier 2/3 markets.
India’s consumer electronics and home appliances market stands at over INR 1.2 lakh crore, growing approximately 10% annually, driven by premiumisation, rising incomes, and digital adoption.
Key players today include Reliance Digital, Croma, Vijay Sales, and Electronics Mart India — all backed by deep capital, national footprints, and sharp digital strategy.
Electronics Mart India raised INR 500 crore through its 2022 IPO. Reliance Digital now operates over 3,500 outlets, rewriting competitive dynamics at every tier.
Viveks, meanwhile, saw revenues contract at -8% CAGR and EBITDA deteriorate sharply. Delayed MSME vendor payments from October 2025 were early, visible signals of stress.
Headcount fell from 1,000-plus to approximately 600 by mid-2026. The store network contracted from 48 to around 34 — quietly but continuously.
Consumer sentiment on large-ticket purchases remains cautious.
Online platforms and brand-exclusive showrooms have together squeezed multi-brand regional retailers into an increasingly difficult position.
Over the years, CDIT brands have distinguished and demarcated the SKUs for online and offline platforms to avoid “showrooming” where consumers compare online prices while at offline stores, especially for home appliances and electronics.
Though Viveks was among the last to launch an omnichannel distribution model, competitors like Sathya and Sangeetha Mobiles had already gone afar.
Editor’s Note
Despite the onslaught of Amazon and Flipkart for over 15 years, retailers like Viveks have withstood the storm, as long as they could.
When CII and McKinsey once described Viveks as “more trusted than the brands it sells,” they were documenting something rare — a retailer that built loyalty not through advertising muscle but through service, access, and deep community trust across Tamil Nadu.
The closure should be read as a structural signal, not merely a business failure.
The economics of the multi-brand consumer electronics format — thin margins, high real estate costs, and intensifying online competition — have become extraordinarily hard to navigate without institutional capital or significant scale.
And yet this need not be the final word.
Brand equity earned over six decades, embedded in the everyday lives of millions of Tamil Nadu families, carries real residual value. The Viveks name still means something — and that is the foundation on which reinvention remains possible.
India’s consumption story is far from over.
The right digital-first, asset-light model could still give trusted regional brands a meaningful second act.
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