News of the year 2009 should be emeregence of billions rupees of companies in mobile handset. Following companies were almost no where in starting of the year 2009. companies are Karbon, Micromax, Lawa and Maxx. along with these companies Zen mobile and rage are also finding ground for themselves.
Lets focus on karbonn and Zen mobile. Karbonn mobile is brain child of pradeep jain. he has experience of distributor of samsung mobile in Delhi. It is where his vision came in focus. Pradeep jain is very sharp and at the end of day knows what requires and where was the gap.
Concern with mobile handsets MNCs has been that they were focused in metros and A class cities. They have hardly developed channel in rural area or say in B and C class cities till 2007.
So B and C class cities were catered by metros and A class cities. As being Samsung distributor way back in 2002 Pradeep jain knew this fact. He had good touch wit potential buyer across India and he sharpened hs skill with vodafone and selected model of Motorola.
Now he has seen untapped market and huge potential. so when Karbonn was launched its targeted audience was B and c class cities with focus on few states. It was its latest stint with cricket that brand generated its demand in Metros. However focus is still on B and C class.
Same is case with Zen mobile, it is comparatively new however its promoters are not.
When these brands were launched they were not with fine talent of Industry. personnel passed out from top management institutions were not even ready to attend interview. These brand has been run by old guys in trade. They may not have best f education but they do have best of experience at local market.
Second thing they put their focus on was pricing, rather than going for abnormal profit they just operated on 15-20% margin.
Third lot size was also taken care. In spite of bigger lot size was restricted to 500-1000 pcs per model. If model was demanded re ordering was done otherwise new model was launched. This way freshness of handset was maintenance. each time customer got new handset with different look color and features.
Fourth target audience was rural or suburban cities. so if phone was slow it was not noticed or was not priority for customer. Mobile phone with camera video and memory card was luxury for such customer. This segment was not techno savvy so even opeartional issues were resolved.
Fifth In india resale of handset matters as much as new handset. And all brands such valued 50% of price day after it is sold. Advantage with these brand was they were providing same value proposition at 50% of price and thus resale was almost taken care.
sixth – Service of handset was an issue. however it is interesting to note that in B and C class cities most of the bigger brands like Nokia samsung sony motorola never had their service centres. so for this segment local repairing was only option available. And these company took advantage of this.
Seventh – They shifted to national television as soon as they saw healty bottom line. It was a double boost for the customer to see their brand on TV with likes of Sachin Tendulkar, Ricky Ponting and Sanath jayasurya.
Eight – There was always a grey market present in India. It was replaced by Chinese cheap phones. So when consumer was offered same thing with authentication it was catch 22 situation for both.
