Karbonn to expand in Africa, South Asia – Daily News & Analysis

Within three years of its existence, Karbonn Mobiles has bagged a spot among the top five domestic handset brands and has lined up major plans to expand overseas. Pradeep Jain, managing director, Karbonn Mobiles, spoke to Beryl Menezesabout the company’s products and its strategy to stay ahead of competition. Excerpts:

How are your smartphones doing as compared to your feature phones?India is set to emerge as one of the largest smartphone markets in the world. Realising this, we launched our first smartphone Karbonn A1 on the Android 2.2 ‘Froyo’ version in 2011. Seeing a positive response, we have launched three more smartphones — Karbonn A9, A7 and A5 — which run on the latest Android 2.3.6 ‘Gingerbread’ platform. For Karbonn, the feature phone segment caters to Tier II and III markets, whereas the smartphone segment caters to Tier-I and II markets.

Some handset vendors plan to phase out their feature phones on account of greater demand for smartphones. Do you have any such plans?We cater to a varied consumer base and believe in massifying technology. With this intent Karbonn has invested variably across product categories of the likes of budget phones, feature, feature-rich, entertainment, smartphones and budget tablets, which cater to the varied population of the country. We intend to provide a communication device to every citizen of the country and thus we have no plans to phase out any of the existing range of mobile phones.

Do you expect your tablets to sell better than your smartphone range?Earlier this month, we introduced India’s first budget Android 4.1 Jellybean tablet in India, priced at Rs6,990. Launched at a time when the market is deluged by budget tablet options, the Smart Tab 1 has still been able to achieve good response. Since both our smartphones and tablets cater to a different consumer base, it is difficult to say which would do better.

What differentiates your offering from other low-cost products?Since 2009 Karbonn has emerged as one of the largest and fastest growing mobile phone brands in South Asia. This is due to our strategic product offering and cutting-edge marketing initiatives. We have decided to create a niche rather than follow the competitors.

What has been the key to your revenue growth?In the last fiscal, our revenues rose 6% to Rs2,500 crore. We expect it to grow by 10% to Rs3,300-3,500 crore this fiscal. Starting with a modest investment of Rs100 crore, Karbonn has been able to achieve this success because of the tenet of massifying technology. We expect to grow by 15% in the next fiscal.

What is Karbonn’s growth strategy?We intend to introduce more products in smartphones and tablets based on the latest Android Ice Cream Sandwich OS. Plans are also on for expansion in new markets like Africa and South Asia, which contribute to 20% to the global sales revenue in the smartphones and tablets segment. This is in line with our aim of becoming a leading global handset brand by 2013.

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