We all know that the smartphone industry has been growing exponentially where big global players are ready for a strong battle to lead India’s smartphone market. Especially the aggression of Chinese brands still bothers Indian vendors as it will be difficult for Indian vendors to compete directly with them on marketing budgets. Mr. Goutam Kumar Jain, Co-Founder, M-tech Informatics Ltd tells DT about their roadmap for 2018.
DT: What have been the crucial milestones of your company during year 2017?
Mr. Goutam: We have sold around 3 million handsets in FY 2016-2017 and this consists of approx. 70% sales of feature phones and also sales projections for the current year is approx. 5-6 million handsets.
DT: How do you the overall expected growth for smartphone market in India? What are the major fuelling factors?
Mr. Goutam: Decreasing prices of mobile phones is increasing smartphone consumption, which in turn is increase the growth of the India mobile phone accessories market. According to the report on global technology and telecom, the country’s smartphone market will grow at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 23% through 2018 and would account for 30% of the global growth during the period. We expect India’s internet penetration to reach 50% by 2018, up from 26% last year, driven by rising smartphone availability and affordability, online content and changing user behavior.
DT: What is the biggest challenge for mobile players in India?
Mr. Goutam: The lack of innovation and R&D capabilities- many Indian firms still buy from Chinese vendors and merely re-badge and sell in India – has probably been an even bigger reason. It will be difficult for Indian vendors to compete directly with China based vendors on marketing budgets.
The Indian brands are basically trading companies who do not have any R&D and are not capable of countering this surge of products from China. The nationalism wave is real but it is not visible in this industry as there is no alternative. If an Indian product is at par with a Chinese product, the consumer will prefer Indian over Chinese.
DT: How do you support Government of India's 'Make-in-India' program? Do you have any suggestion for government to make this more much more attractive?
Mr. Goutam: We surely support ‘Make – in –India’ program but it take 3-4 years but I am sure it is possible in India. We have started taking pro-active strategy due to encouraging government policies. Government should start giving more incentive to SME’s. Also, we believe the next big opportunity lies in PCBA Assembling and Housing [mobile phone plastic body] manufacturing and we as a company would be targeting it.
DT: What's your distribution strategy currently in India? How do you plan to boost channel strength in year 2018?
Mr. Goutam: We have more than 700 plus distribution,20,000 retailers and 700+ service centres, M-tech is well positioned to leverage its country wide presence to transform into an end to end consumer brand with its new endeavors. We are planning to appoint more channel partner in 2018.
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. Goutam: We are giving 120 days replacement service on feature phone. We are very much concerned about giving best service support to our customer in days to come. To gear up this commitment, company is planning to make 1000 service center by 2020 to cater the service support need across India.
DT: Please share your current revenue and market growth rate. What is target for year 2018?
Mr. Goutam: Currently we have revenue of Rs. 340 cr. With excellent go-to-market strategy, we are targeting Rs. 500 cr. revenue in year 2018.
