Consumer electrical and electronics major V-Guard Industries Ltd on Thursday said it registered close to 9 percent growth in the first half of the current financial year and expects the second half to be better.

"Nine percent growth was less but second half can be better," said Ramachandran Venkataraman, Director & Chief Operating Officer, V-Guard told IANS here.

He said the Q2 was better than Q1 and things were getting closer to normal. He exuded confidence that normalcy will return by Q4 as things were slowly getting better post-demonetisation and post-GST.

Things were also improving real estate and other sectors on which consumer electrical and electronics segment depend. "We hope the next year will be better," he said.

The Kochi-based company had revenues of Rs 2,100 crore during 2016-17, registering a growth of 15 percent. However, demonetisation and GST and the impact on other sectors, especially on real estate, impacted the sales during the current financial year.

Following the success of its smart water heater, V-Guard on Thursday launched the nation's first-ever smart inverter.

Equipped with nine smart features, the inverter can be controlled through an app on any smartphone. The app allows consumer to control the performance levels based on the appliance's capacity.

Ramachandran said that the smart inverter also help consumers to complete a task disrupted by power outage.

The cost of smart inverter is 20 percent higher than the traditional one. The company expects that 30 percent of all its inverters in the next financial year will be smart inverters.

He said the rollout of smart features for the entire range of inverters including solar-based inverters will be completed by March-April next year.

V-Guard plan to sell 4.5 lakh inverters during the current fiscal.