Last year’s success story, OnePlus, took the world by surprise. It is a common practice for businesses to first establish a base at home before growing in international territories. OnePlus decided to do it the other way round. Yes, India has become one of the largest markets for OnePlus, within months of its launch here.
OnePlus differs from other phone makers because it focuses on selling phones with small margins, monetizing, instead, on software, services and applications.
In an interview with Forbes, Carl Pei, the 26-year-old Co-Founder and Global Head of OnePlus, spoke in detail about what the Indian consumer and the Indian market means for the company. He revealed that even before OnePlus arrived in India, they had already amassed a huge following.
Here’s what he had to say:
We entered India because in our backend, we saw many of our users are actually in India, despite the fact that we didn’t sell any phones in India. We had 5,000 to 7,000 activations in India when we decided, “Hey, let’s go check it out.” After we launched, it quickly grew to become one of our biggest markets.
Unlike companies like Apple, Samsung and LG, India is a top priority market for OnePlus. We have seen in the past, excitement does surge up whenever the Chinese company releases a teaser of a new device. OnePlus acknowledges the enthusiasm of the Indian market, and honours and understands it.
He also added a bit about what OnePlus has understood about India:
What’s different in India is that the smartphone is going to be the centerpiece of a new tech revolution because in India, people are skipping buying a computer or a laptop or a tablet to just buy a smartphone. So the smartphone has super high importance for consumers in India, and it’s going to drive a lot of innovation in the future. So India is definitely going to be one of our high priority markets
OnePlus had early tied up solely with Amazon India to sell its products here. To reach a greater scale, the company expanded into other channels, and added Flipkart as its seller. The Bengaluru-based India team is currently less than 10 people, which will grow to around 30 by the end of the year. Pei wants to hire a “more global team” here, adding that there are plans to base research and development in India in the future.
Source : [tw-button size=”medium” background=”#07ABE2″ color=”” target=”_blank” link=”http://www.forbes.com/sites/ckgsb/2015/06/24/after-making-it-big-globally-oneplus-turns-its-gaze-to-china/”]Forbes[/tw-button]
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