TV sets sold by Onida were quite famous at one point.
There used to be a misconception among a lot of people, who believed Onida was a Japanese company.
Remember the popular advertisement of Onida TVs back in the 90s and early 2000s? It featured a demon with horns and a tail, popularly came to be known as the Onida demon. Television sets sold by Onida became very famous, with the company capturing a sizable portion of the TV market. There used to be a misconception among a lot of people, who believed Onida was a Japanese company. It is very much an Indian brand, formerly known as Mirc Electronics Ltd and is owned by GL Mirchandani. This wrong notion was due to the name Onida, which sounded Japanese. It was deliberately kept by GL Mirchandani. Mirc Electronics was established in 1981. The Onida brand was born under this company.
In 1976, GL Mirchandani started looking for a name for his electronics brand. He was clear about two things, one being that the brand name should have nothing to do with his surname and that it should sound Japanese. The reason for the second criterion was that he felt that was the only way to compete with brands like LG and Samsung.
His wife then came across a cutlery brand named Oneida in a magazine and she liked the name. She showed it to GL Mirchandani and he liked it too. To avoid legal issues, he decided to drop the ‘E’ from the name and thus named his brand Onida. The strategy worked; for a very long time, people believed the brand to be Japanese.
The reason behind the horned demon is pretty simple. Onida also means ‘devil’ in Japanese and thus the idea of the devilish imagery and demon to promote the brand intrigued GL Mirchandani. This was a great marketing strategy and the Onida demon had become a part of popular cultural icon in the 90s.
Onida also came up with the famous tagline Neighbour’s Envy, Owner’s Pride.
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