The increasing trend of being digital is benefiting several industries including Smartphone, Networking & Broadband Industry. Smartphone is now a very important thing in one’s life. itel is one of the leading brands in this segment and dynamically flourishing since its inception. In a recent interaction with DT, Mr. Marco Ma, MD, Transsion India reveals their strategies to continue their growth in India.
DT: What have been the crucial milestones of your company during year 2017?
Mr. Marco: 2017 has been a remarkable year for TRANSSION India. In line with company’s multi-brand strategy, TRANSSION India launched three mobile phone brands including TECNO, Spice Devices and Infinix post the successful launch of itel in 2016 catering to different target markets and diversified consumer requirements. itel witnessed overwhelming consumer adoption and has continued to be one of the leading brand in India, as per industry reports by CMR and Counterpoint since its launch in April last year.
Since our inception in India, we’ve been on a mission to provide a superior smartphone experience to all our customers through unique service proposition for all our brands. itel Mobile revolutionized the after-sales service proposition in Indian mobile industry by offering first of its kind 100 days replacement warranty. Furthermore, Spice Devices launched in India with a path breaking service offering of 1-year replacement warranty, across its portfolio including smartphones and feature phones, thereby ensuring quality to the consumers. Likewise, our TECNO brand comes with the ‘111’ promise which is 100 days replacement, 1 year screen replacement and 1 month extended warranty (additional to 12 months).
Firming up on our mission and to re-iterate our commitment to ensure quality after sales service to our consumers, we launched our exclusive after sales service brand, Carlcare in India, this year. With the launch of the brand, we aim to provide the best after sales experience to our consumers across our mobile brands.
We’ve stood by our commitment to ensure that all our product offerings are painstakingly designed to deliver the best value, features, and functionality to our customers, at the most competitive prices.
DT: How do you the overall expected growth for smartphone market in India? What are the major fuelling factors?
Mr. Marco: One trend that’s clearly evident in India is that the nation is going through a phase of massive digitization. Digital technologies are enveloping people-centric, day-to-day use cases – from Aadhaar Card-linking to booking movie tickets, filing of Goods & Services Tax, down to availing personal loans. Everything has been gradually taking place at the touch of a button. There’s little doubt that the nation’s smartphone market, with two-third of the country’s population still unserved, is going to skyrocket in the near future. Apart from this, 4G services are being received with open arms by customers and are one of the prime drivers for Smartphone adoption.
DT: What is the biggest challenge for mobile players in India?
Mr. Marco: Indian customers are value seeking and have been exposed to fast moving technology trends. While western countries are largely driven by device’s visual appearance and a set of top features, which gives players there more room for diversification. However, Indian mobile phone players do not enjoy such luxury. Customers in India require high specification smartphone offerings that do not burn hole in their pocket.
Furthermore, if you compare India with European nations, individual regions are country-like segments, and hence, unique markets within themselves. Industry players have to identify regional requirements and develop their offerings accordingly. Maintaining channel hygiene, in this case, is also not any less of a daunting task.
DT: What's your distribution strategy currently in India? How do you plan to boost channel strength in year 2018?
Mr. Marco: The reason behind the massive acceptance of itel has clearly been our unique approach towards the Indian market. The brand offers innovative, value-added products to aspiring smartphone consumers and has a huge distribution base which allows us to deeply penetrate into the relatively untapped rural markets.
The offline retail strategy allows users to interact with the seller, experience the device firsthand and make instant decision for their final purchase. From an overall perspective, maintaining an offline presence helps to build brand recall and increase word-of-mouth publicity.
Brand itel has focused on strengthening its overall distribution strategy by nurturing deeper penetration into offline channels. We’ve not only provided our channel partners with quality products and a robust service proposition, but have additionally rolled out multiple partner-focussed schemes and distribution engagement programs. Many of these initiatives have been implemented in relatively smaller locations, where no other mobile brand has a presence. This has helped us to create a robust and well-connected distribution network of more than 1000 distributors enabling better accessibility and availability of our products across the country.
For TRANSSION India, localisation is the mantra for 2018. We will aggressively focus on local marketing programs backed by heavy service presence in deeper pockets of the country along with the launch of products which are relevant to our audience.
DT: How do you assure your customer excellent service support? What are your investment plan to enhance service support infrastructure to cover entire India?
Mr. Marco: At, TRANSSION India, customer is the king and our commitment towards them is of high priority. Since our inception in India we’ve been on a mission to provide a superior smartphone experience to all our customers through unique service proposition for all our brands. itel Mobile revolutionized the after-sales service proposition in Indian mobile industry by offering first of its kind 100 days replacement warranty. Furthermore, Spice Devices launched in India with a path breaking service offering of 1-year replacement warranty, across its portfolio including smartphones and feature phones, thereby ensuring quality to the consumers. Likewise, our TECNO brand comes with the “111” promise which is 100 days replacement, 1 year screen replacement and 1 month extended warranty.
Firming up on our mission and to re-iterate our commitment to ensure quality to the Indian consumers, we introduced our exclusive after sales service brand, Carlcare in India, this year. With the launch of the brand and a company-owned, company-operated (COCO) centre in Noida the capabilities of our robust after-sales network have further been augmented. We aim to provide the best after sales experience to our consumers. The team is fully capable to handle the service issues and complaints thereby, addressing the pain points of the customers. We offer 72-hour turnaround time across our brand portfolios thus, bringing in faster and superlative repair efficiencies. Collectively, this offers an exceptional service proposition to our customers that we further aim to take to another level in the near future.
The Carlcare India warehouse is fully equipped with the latest state of the art technology to maintain a smooth workflow. TRANSSION India plans to expand to 15 centers across India within 1 year. We also offer service touch points as more than 900 for our customers.”
