Zopo Mobile Plans to Set Up a Manufacturing Plant in India to Support ‘Make in India’ Initiative
Zopo Mobile also known as Shenzhen ZOPO Communication Equipment Co., Ltd., headquartered in Shenzhen, China and established in 2008, is a hi-tech enterprise engaged in the design, manufacture and marketing of mobile intelligent terminal products. With clients spread across 135 countries, ZOPO is an internationalized enterprise in the communications industry, with a design team in Europe, and sales location teams in Europe, Southeast Asia, Middle East and South America. ZOPO Europe Operations Center has been established on April 1st 2015 to support the marketing and after-sales service in the European market. Currently ZOPO is engaged in three main product lines: Speed, Flash and Color series. Also, it is the first brand to have a 365 days replacement warranty.
In an interaction with Sujata Sangwan of BW Businessworld, Sanjeev Bhatia, CEO of ZOPO Mobile, India and M.D. of Adcom Pvt. Ltd., shared company’s future plans in India as well as globally.
Tell us about Zopo entry in India? When the company entered and how many units sold till date?
Zopo’s entry in India has been a very memorable one. In a press conference in New Delhi about two years ago, we launched ZOPO in August 2015. We marked ZOPO’s entry in India with 2 of its flagship models then, the speed 7 and speed 7 plus. These models have been very successful and even till date we are selling these models. The feedback we received for them has been very phenomenal.
ZOPO has sold approximately 2,00,000 units till date. Our main focus has been on providing the Indian smartphone users with quality products. If you go through our portfolio you will notice that we have just launched 10-12 models in a span of 2 years and that is because we don’t want to focus on numbers, we just want our focus and priority to be the provision of quality smartphones to our users. We believe that once we get established as a quality brand the numbers will automatically rise.
Zopo present achievements & future plans (In India as well as globally)?
As far as achievements are concerned, we believe in provision of innovation by the means of our products to our Indian Smartphone users. In July 2016, we launched our flagship smartphone, the Speed 8, the first one in the world to have a deca-core processor. Our Color series’ models, F2 & F5 were the first products to feature a multi-function fingerprint scanner.
More recently, we have launched our Flash series in India, with the world’s fastest fingerprint scanner with a response time of 1.6s. It was the first to achieve a 90 degree wide angle effect in a single front camera, clicking wide angle or group selfies.
In terms of service, we have been the fastest brand to reach 200+ distributors in a short span of mere 3 months. Recently, we reached a milestone of 250 Zopo Care Partners across India.
ZOPO was the first smartphone brand to introduce the true octa-core processor to the global market. ZOPO is a well recognized and accepted brand in more than 135 countries. It also enjoys the position of the topmost brand in countries like Spain and Germany. Zopo has a partnership deal with the e-commerce giant, Alibaba.
What unique strategy are you taking to beat this rising competition and for their business growth?
In terms of strategy, as of now, we are selling our products in the offline general trade market. But in future we will be selling our products online as well from online e-commerce channels and also from our website. In the next quarter, we will have our own shopping cart on our website from where you will be able to buy all our products. Currently, we have 3 series of smartphones: The Flash Series, the Color Series and the Speed Series. In the near future we are planning to make the Speed Series exclusive for the online market only while the others series will be exclusive for the offline market.
Apart from that, we always focus on getting innovative products for our users, as people today are always looking out for something new and this is where we stand out from other brands. We also make sure to introduce the right products, at the right place, at the right time that helps us with a competitive advantage. Our price will always be affordable as compared to other international or Chinese smartphone brands. With the same specifications, you will find that our price we will always be 10-20% below other brands which is our main strategy to compete here in India.
We also strongly believe in customer care and support. We were the first ones and are the only ones to offer a 365 days replacement warranty to all our Indian smartphone users on all our products. This is only possible due to our strong confidence in our hardware. In case of hardware failure we replace the product free of cost for the end user within 365 days.
How Chinese market is different from India?
The china market is very different from the Indian market as of now. The Indian market is learning from the China market. The China market was same as the Indian market 5 years ago. They had a lot of players like the Indian market has now. Presently, the Indian market has more than 100 players, combining the domestic, the international and gray market brands. This is the same condition China was in about 5 years ago. But the china market saturated over time and right now is left with just 10-15 serious brands competing in market.
We believe that India will follow the same change in the market trend that China underwent. The Indian market has always been a follower of China in terms of industry and manufacturing practices. The Indian market will be like a funnel where most of the players will exit the market leaving behind only the serious ones.
What opportunities are you looking out in India and what goals have you decided for the coming 5 years?
We are looking forward to improvement in market share along with its presence in modern trade and LFRs with the goal of trying to be present on all possible platforms to reach out to the target market. In terms of goals, we want to provide more innovative products to the end users. We make it a point to provide them with the latest technology at an affordable price. We are looking for opportunities to penetrate deeper in the Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities instead of focusing on Tier 1 and metro cities. We believe that these cities have more scope of growth and the rate of development is also much faster as compared to the other Tier cities.
We have plans to set up a manufacturing plant here in India thus supporting the ‘Make in India’ movement. It will also lead to more job opportunities for the Indian youth. As our volume grows in India, post GST we will be looking forward to move ahead with this project to put it into action.
How do you look at expansion?
As of now we have about 300 distributors in India. We are looking to get more distributors onboard and increase the reach of ZOPO. But at the moment our focus is not just on increasing the horizontal growth and reach of our distribution but also the vertical growth and reach of our distribution. This will help us to penetrate deeper into the Indian market.
We are also looking forward to expand through LFRs, i.e. the big electronic outlets like Vijay Sales, Croma, Sangeeta Mobiles etc. We are in talks with a lot of LFRs and soon enough this medium of reaching out to the smartphone users will also be open to us.
