“Be Indian, buy Indian,” says Rahul Sharma, co-founder, Micromax Informatics, when asked how his company plans to cope up with the competition in the market, especially Chinese vendors.
“Competition will continue; without competition, the market will not flourish. There was competition even when we entered the market. You have to swim yourself to get to the shore,” he told BusinessLine on the sidelines of a new smartphone launch here.
On the company’s fall in rankings over the past few months as per some research reports, he said the company deliberately stepped back during the past few months as the market was crowded.
“Then demonetisation also happened; we thought of keeping quiet during those mayhems. You could do only two things — either step back and analyse or become part of that (mayhem),” Sharma said, adding that in 2017, Micromax will regain whatever lost in 2016.
He said the company did a lot of back-end work, such as investing in 10 start-ups and setting up three more factories creating around 25,000 jobs, last year.
According to the International Data Corporation’s (IDC) Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, Micromax’s overall annual growth declined by more than 20 per cent in 2016 calendar year, one of the reasons Micromax didn’t estimate the growth in 4G handsets adoption in the country and the company primarily caught with 3G smartphones inventory.
‘Stabilised market’
Sharma is confident of again taking the company to among the top five as “the market is stabilised and back in action”. He said the company’s fourth plant at Pithampur, Madhya Pradesh, will come up in a few months with a capacity to employ 5,000-7,000 people.
The company on Wednesday launched smartphone Dual 5, priced at ₹24,999. The device, which will go on sale on April 10, boasts of 13MP dual rear camera and 13 MP front camera with flash. It is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 652, is LTE enabled, and has integrated graphics with a 64-biT processor. It also has high-speed memory with 128GB ROM, and is powered by 3200mAh battery.