Fly Mobiles aims to sell 1 million smartphones via ecommerce route by 2015-16

NEW DELHI: London-head-quartered Fly Mobiles is aiming to sell 1 million smartphones through ecommerce route sales route by the end of the financial year 2015-16, a top official said.

Fly Mobiles is a part of Fly Russia, which is number two player in Russia and has operations in CIS countries. The company has been selling feature phone and smartphones through offline retail channel in the country thus far.

“We have redefined our strategy to focus on online sales for our smartphones. It’s kind of relaunching our brand in the country,” Rahul Goel, CEO, Fly Mobiles, told ET.

By leveraging the ecommerce route in India, the company hopes to boost sales to the levels achieved by Xiaomi and Motorola in the country. E-commerce is rapidly changing the traditional sales channels for the smartphone industry in India as well as in other markets.

The online-only route has helped China’s Xiaomi to break in to the top five smartphone vendors in the fourth quarter, according to market research firm IDC. Vendors such as Huawei, ZTE and Asus, along with some India brands, have also started focusing on their online businesses.

Goel said that the company’s internal research shows that in 2014 calendar year 12-15 million mobile phones were sold online in India with 90 per cent being smartphones. “We expect at least 70-80 per cent in the online sales of smartphones in 2015, which is a huge opportunity why we are leveraging the online route to launch our smartphones,” he added.

The company Wednesday launched three Kitkat OS powered smartphones with the cheapest device priced at Rs 2,999 and the high-end device priced at Rs 6,999. The company will soon release Lollipop update for these devices.

It has tied-up with ecommerce market place Snapdeal to exclusively sell these three smartphones. “We have sufficient stocks of these devices. Depending on customer uptake, we will scale up the supply,” Goel said, adding that the company may look at partnering with other ecommerce players in the long term.

Korean major Samsung presently leads the Indian smartphone market with a 22 per cent share in the fourth quarter of 2014, followed by Micromax (18 per cent), Intex (8 per cent), Lava (7 per cent) and Xiaomi (4 per cent), according to IDC.

On competition, Goel said that the market is hyper cluttered competitive market. “Hyper competiveness keeps you on edge and make you to do innovative things,” he added.

Fly Mobiles will launch one new smartphone every month in the price range of Rs 3,000-Rs 9,000. Goel said that Fly Mobiles will soon launch its 4G LTE range of smartphones priced between Rs 7,000- Rs 9,000.

According to him, the company’s investment will go towards marketing and after sales service. The handset maker currently operates 450 services centers in the country and is looking to expand it further to reach smaller towns.

The company has around 100 people in the country. It has manufacturing and Research and development facilities in China.