With focus on offline and price, Comio starts making inroads in budget smartphones
0With focus on offline and price, Comio starts making inroads in budget smartphones.
In one of the dusty bylanes of Badarpur, inside a glass edifice that houses many tech companies, is a new company trying its luck in the Indian smartphone space. Unlike the latest entrants, this is not a big billions Chinese venture, but a homegrown challenger who hopes to cash in on local marketing knowledge and focussed approach for its success. And Comio has had some success in the first few months of its launch.
When Comio was conceptualised in February 2017, Xiaomi was still an online player, explains Sanjay Kumar Kalirona, CEO and Director, COMIO. “Indian brands were not doing well in the Rs 5,000 to Rs 10,000 price band. There was no strong offline brand in this budget segment and it was mostly online brands selling in the offline channel too.
My intuition was that if we work in a focussed manner offline we would be successful. The plan was to secure a 30 per cent market share in this specific segment and become number one. So as a manufacturer our strength is this mid segment, we are not into feature phones or high-end smartphones.” Kalirona, who was mobile business head of Intex till 2016, is known for his understanding of the traditional channels in India’s mobile market.
Less than half a year after a launch in August, Comio is pushing monthly sales of 1.25 lakh units and hopes to go completely local with manufacturing soon. “These numbers are almost three times better than my initial estimates. But, though we earlier thought of expanding to south and east, now we are going to focus on North India till April at least and consolidate this position,” says Kalirona, adding that it was better to become a strong player in the markets you have entered by plugging the gaps than spreading thin right from the start.