Advent went through a massive shift in 2015 as it changed gears and took the distribution in its own hands instead of having ND in place. DT spoke the Mr. Vikram Kalia -Director Sales & Marketing -ADIT Infratel to gauge more details about their current and future plans for the Indian market.
Q. How will you summarise overall performance of your company in year 2015?
A. The year 2015 has been a stable year seeing the past few years. Industry has seen lot of action with new regulations coming in. Mr. Modi’s Make in India drive has further given boost to the industry with a lot of multinationals coming to India for tie-ups and JVs. Market sentiments from the sales point of view were not really great. But for us, as we have small footprint across the country, there was a lot to do. We brought a major change in the middle of the year when we changed gears and took the distribution in our own hands instead of having ND in place. This change has helped us a lot as we have better control over the channel. We were able to go to new markets and also further strengthen our product-lines to capture additional market share. Our core business of OEM has grown by 30% over the last year and the channel business has gone up by almost 50%.
Q. Why should consumers or partners rest faith in your brand?
A. Transparency is the first and foremost reason why anyone would trust you. We have followed this religiously. We have experience of more than 20 yrs now in the manufacturing industry. The team behind the operations have creditability of their own which they have built over years of working in the industry. From customers' standpoint we have a good product line to offer with a lot of reliability. With our power banks, made using Samsung SDI cells, and new USB Mobile chargers offering one year unconditional warranty we have won the consumer trust.
Q. What's your opinion about Government of India's 'Make-in-India' program?
A. It is a great initiative but it seems there are still some gaps in the entire understanding of Make-in-India. Make-in-India currently focuses more on the bigger products and has a little scope for the SMEs. Government should have given major benefits for setting up quality infrastructure. Currently bringing raw material from outside and making in India is not changing the things much. We as an organisation are in support of Make-in-India and are geared up to work with home grown biggies.
Q. What kind of regulatory changes should happen to improve the business ecosystem in the country?
A. Biggest change that we should bring is to give additional benefits to the manufacturing units for another two years so that manufacturing can be encouraged. All measures should be taken to eliminate red tape.
Q. How does the channel help you to reach out to your potential customers?
A. We have a strong team and strong channel network across the country. We have partners who are having penetration and scalability. Channel partners were waiting for the range of products from our side and with launch of BT speakers, Certified MFI cables, USB Cables, Echobudz and Echophonz range of wearable audio products and new range of Portable chargers, their confidence in our brand has strengthened. They can see going a long way with us.
Q. What are your assurance for providing excellent service support to your customer?
A. We are committed to provide best of the service to our channel partners and customers. We handle service on priority. We have no middlemen to handle services. We have our partners taking care of the service. We do not repair. We just replace. We have reverse logistics system in place to pick up the RMA and replace the same directly from our manufacturing facility.
Q. What's your roadmap or strategy for the year 2016?
A. On the OEM front we are coming up with a manufacturing facility for the mobile phone batteries and hence will be looking forward to set up Jvs or tie-ups with Indian and multinational mobile brands. On the our brand front, we will be strengthening our distribution further and bringing 100 more cities under direct coverage. We will be adding up more products. Looking forward for exclusive tie-ups and working strongly on the marketing will be the core to achieve our goals for 2016. We will be equally aggressive for online sales.
Q. What are your current revenue? What are your projection for the year 2016?
A. We will be clocking Rs 30 crore this year. With the same product-line and OEMs we expect to do around Rs 40 crore next year.
