Karbonn targets 10 p.c market share in India

NEW DELHI, INDIA: Karbonn Mobile, a joint venture between Delhi-based Jaina Group and Bangalore-based UTL Group, is gearing up to capture 10 per cent market share of Indian mobile market and in the process it will invest Rs 50 crore in increasing its visibility in this financial year.

"The share of emerging brand in Indian market is estimated to be around 27 per cent. Everywhere emerging brands are making dent in the market share of the existing players. In India we expect that by March 2010 we will be able to capture 7 to 10 per cent share in the mobile market," said Pradeep Jain, managing director, Jaina Group at the launch of the new range of Karbonn Mobile here today.

But if we go by recent IDC estimates, this target seems bit too ambitious. According to IDC, the emerging brands in India have market share of 6.3 per cent only.

On the other hand, the established brands like Nokia, Samsung and LG have market share of 56.8, 7.7 and 5.4 per cent respectively. If Karbonn is able to achieve the higher percentage as committed, then it is likely to leave behind some of the established brand like Samsung and LG in the race. Will that be possible?

Jain sounded confident on his commitment to achieve the said target.

"We have a large distribution network. As distributors we have supported most of the existing brands. In 2001 as distributor, we launched Samsung mobile phones in India. When we can do it for others, then we will definitely succeed for our brand," explained Jain.

Jaina Group claims to have tie-up with 500 distributors, reaching out to 50,000 retailers across the country. The company has plans to double its network of retailers by the end of 2009.

“The growth is now coming from rural market. We are well aware of the need of rural customers and our phones are designed for them. We have phones with 2 megapixel camera, 600 hours of stand-by time, in-built torch and with memory expandable up to 8GB,” claimed Shashin Devsare, executive director, Jaina Gorup.

“Our phones are designed to meet the requirements of rural customer to which existing brands have not been able to cater. Our phones will be present across 80 per cent districts of India very soon,” he added.

Though Karbonn Mobile phones are loaded with multimedia features, it seems to be a challenge for the company in achieving this target, as existing brands in GSM segment offer similar and additional features like mobile Internet in the same price range of Karbonn Mobiles. The company has come up with multimedia handset ranging from Rs 1890 to Rs 5000 for the Indian market.

But the company aims to meet its goal by tapping the potential of the CDMA market. According to the latest figures released by Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), the number of CDMA subscribers in India was 98.46 million which amounted to 23 per cent of the overall wireless subscriber base.

"We are soon going to have tie-up with a CDMA operator and expects to see good amount of growth coming from this segment," said Jain. Jain also claimed that the company is about finalize a deal with two GSM operators as well.

The company has plans to launch three to four new handset models every quarter. In January, Karbonn Mobile has plans to introduce touchscreen 3G enabled handset in the price range of Rs 7000.

Karbonn said it has already covered Bangladesh as the first country in its launch initiative for South Asia and will shortly cover Sri Lanka and Nepal as well. The company also intends to launch Karbonn Mobiles in the Middle East and Africa in the first quarter of the financial year 2010-11.

Karbonn is also contemplating setting up SKD-kit based manufacturing operations in India after reaching a critical sales volumes of around one million handsets per month in 2010-11.

At present all of its phones are being manufactured in China and Taiwan.