The Smartphone no longer remains a luxury it is well accepted as the necessity to Indian Homes. This market has become one of the toughest market to retain as technology changes very fast. Ziox, one of the Indian brands has taken this challenge and committed to offer innovative, updated and affordable smartphone to all customers. Deepak Kabu, CEO of Ziox Mobiles, has already laid down his aggressive plan for the market and hopes to achieve good growth in the New Year.
DT: What have been the crucial milestones of your company during year 2017?
Mr. Deepak: A –2017 has been a great year for us. We launched aseries of smartphoneas well as feature phones.Having Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput as the new face of Ziox Mobiles was the cherry on the cake! Also our smart phone series were widely appreciated and accepted in the market. Bringing latest in technology at the best prices, has helped Ziox carve a niche for the brand. Some of the key innovations we saw this year includes,for the first time in India ‘Wi-Fi Feature’ in a feature phonewith an 8 GB internal memory, or Dual Selfie Camera Smartphone with Duopix.
DT: How do you the overall expected growth for smartphone market in India?
Mr. Deepak: Affordable Handsets and the proliferation of 4G connectivity has helped India overtake the US to become the world’s second-largest smartphone market. Doubts about India’s market potential are clearly dispelled by this result.After a wobble in the second quarter of 2017, India’s smartphone market recovered quickly with shipments growing 23% year-on-year in the third quarter to reach just over 40 million units. It is estimated that our country’s smartphone market will grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 23% through 2018 and would account for 30 % of the global growth during the period.
DT: What is the biggest challenge for mobile players in India?
Mr. Deepak: The biggest challenge for mobile players in India is the highly competitive market.A rapidly increasing market share of Chinese players coupled with fierce competition has adversely affected Indian mobile phone manufacturers’ business profile. The fact that, in the first quarter of 2017, Chinese mobile phone manufacturers’ market share was estimated to be around 51% speaks volumes. Additionally,the industry is currently facing a slowdown in revenue growth and a huge pressure on profit margin.
DT: How do you support Government of India's 'Make-in-India' program?
Mr. Deepak: We completely support this initiative, as we believe this will help all Indian brands like us to attain a good market share first on our home ground and thenworldwide. The government’s effort to help Indian start-ups is very encouraging for us. We do hope that duties should be cut by 2-3 % and it should be hiked for import so that an apparent difference is created.
DT: What's your distribution strategy currently in India? How do you plan to boost channel strength in year 2018?
Mr. Deepak: Ziox is a very channel friendly company.Year 2017 has allowed us to spread our trustworthy tentacles across markets in India. We haveconnected to the user through a variety of channels, using a range of marketing intermediaries. We already have 750+ distributors on board with us in all tier 1, 2 and 3 cities.Now the emphasis is to increase our distribution strength and for that we are focussing on far flung areas with right price-good features package so that people in semi urban and rural areas can avail maximum benefits.
DT: How do you assure your customer excellent service support?
Mr. Deepak: Going by our tag line, ‘Quality That Speaks’, we assure 100% SERVICE to our end to end customers. For this we have currently opened up 800+ service centres across India.Ziox is perhaps the only brand which has over 125 self-owned service centres to provide after sales services across the country.Ziox is popularly known among its TG for the after Sales Service. A testimony to which remains our 111 Days Replacement Policy for our feature phones.
DT: Please share your current revenue and market growth rate. What is target for year 2018?
Mr. Deepak: Ziox is steadily expanding and growing. We aim to become a brand to be reckoned with, by hitting more than 10million handsets in the fiscal year 2018. To achieve the same, we will be coming up with more technologically advanced phones. Our current revenue is approx.500 cr.Ziox has attained a significant market share, purely on the basis of an aggressive retail and go to market strategy. Weaim to attain a market share of 5-6 % by 2018.
