IPL exposure will take us to the next level: Intex

With a casual mohawk and wearing a blue tee on black trousers, 24-year-old Keshav Bansal, the second generation leader at the home-grown mobile and computer peripherals firm Intex, can easily pass off as a cricket enthusiast immersed in the T20 euphoria.

Wins bid The firm has joined the IPL party through Suresh Raina-led Gujarat Lions by winning the BCCI’s reverse bid for a “minus ₹10 crore”.

Bansal said the IPL franchise will help propel the firm into the next orbit in the mobile handset market. Bansal, who was in Hyderabad last week, to cheer up his team, said the firm is leveraging its extensive distributor network in Gujarat and other States to promote the team and the merchandise.

Leading market “Gujarat is a leading market for us and our foray into IPL will help us build the brand image. It shows the strength of our corporate muscle,” Bansal, Director, of Intex Technologies, pointed out.

Visibly happy over the team’s performance with its entry into the final leg of the competition, the youngest owner of an IPL team says participation in the cricketing extravaganza will significantly improve the brand recall not only in India but also in the neighbouring countries.

Expansion plan The firm is setting up a ₹1,500-acre manufacturing hub at Noida with a capacity to produce 50 million mobile phones and other consumer electronic devices. “We acquired 20 acres to build the hub, our fifth facility,” he said.

“This additional capacity will make us self-reliant in mobile production. We are meeting 70 per cent of our production needs in the country. When the additional capacities are operational, we will be self reliant,” Bansal said.

The firm, which started off with a turnover of ₹1 crore in 1996, registered a turnover of ₹6,300 crore last year. It sells 2.5 million phones a month. Using the additional production capacities, the firm plans to enter the Myanmar and Russian markets this year.

The company is among the top mobile handset players in Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

On reports of its public issue to raise funds, he asserts that the plan is still under consideration and no decision has been taken yet.

“We are firming up plans. When we go for the public issue, we will go for it directly and there are no plans to raise pre-IPO private equity fund,” he added.