"We have progressed from being a cheap brand to a value-for-money one", said Vikas Jain of Micromax

"Micromax creates aspirations and provided devices which fulfills those aspirations" believes Vikas Jain co-founder, Micromax. Jain has been steering the company from the vision perspective, getting into international markets, getting into production, getting into new formats like tablets and dongles and trying to de-risk the business with the growth of the brand. In an exclusive interaction with DQ Channels, Jain underlines the fundamental principles that have led Micromax to grow at a phenomenal rate of 110% y-o-y.

Micromax was initially developed to bring mobile technology in the hands of the common masses who could afford the price of the expensive then existing brands. With your aggressive initiatives to expand your footprints in the international mobile market, how far do you think are you from fulfilling your initial objective?
Penetrating into a different geography brings volume and the benefit of the pricing adds value to our end consumers. We have always been a value for money brand. Our target end consumers are not those who want to pay say only `1,000 for a mobile phone but our target market includes those who have aspirations from their mobile phones but have limited or constrained budget. Herein we make our appearance by helping such consumers bundle up their aspirations at an affordable budget and stand true to being the "value for money" brand that we have always been.

Can you please elaborate on your idea of democratizing technology.
The market prior to the entry of Micromax was one where technology was always available at a premium price. What we did is that we took advantage of the overhead population in India and leverage the volume to bring the technology at the mass level. This is what is meant by democratizing technology.

Please give your top product innovation that you have launched in the recent past and how do you think you are contributing towards changing the mobile ecosystem of India.
With the launch of Canvas 2, we have brought in large display at a price that caters to our target genre of youth. They have lapped in 5.0 inch screen form factor and now we see few of other brands following soon. Herein, we have brought a revolution by influencing the youth to shift from feature phones to smartphones and not pay a very huge amount for the same for the upgradation. Since youth are probably the early and the highest adopters this technology, we think that if they could stay connected with smartphone, it will not only be good for them but also for the entire mobile ecosystem.

The adoption of data has improved tremendously in India. With busy lifestyle and not having enough leisure time have promoted the working India to do majority of their tasks on the move with the help of devices and the technologies associated with them. As the whole telecom ecosystem kept focusing on trying to get the price of mobile handsets cheaper and cheaper, we thought it was prudent for us to bring in more data devices which could help to upgrade. Today on the tele density chart we have more consumers who want to upgrade than acquire. Even the operators are focusing on the same principle and are not investing their money to acquire new customers rather trying to upgrade their customers. Micromax has worked at this opportunity thereby changing mobile ecosystem.

Have you increased your market share, going by the frequent launch of new products?
We have not gone into fitting ourselves into already established market segments but what we have created is a new segment and then tried to take a leadership into that. If one trace the adoption of smartphones by the youth prior to the penetration of Micromax and compare it to the scenario now, then one can pretty well guess about the new market that we have initiated instead of seeking a pie from an existing market chart.

What was the gap that made you launch an Indian mobile phone brand and which section of population did you target initially? How has this changed now?
At that time, what we observed is that the consumers were forced to buy what was available to them. It was not exactly the product of their choice but of course nearer to the product of their choice. The way we evolved Micromax is that we reached closer to the consumers by giving them what exactly was the product of their choice. The first product we launched gave them 30 days battery back up and it was what the consumers wanted in a nation where power cuts are normal phenomenon.

What your challenges and how you overcame them?
The first perception with the consumers was associating Micromax with being a very cheap brand. Over a period of last five years that we have been in the industry, we have migrated from being a cheap brand to being a brand which is "value for money" and as we are progressing we are becoming the brand or the product of the choice. What we always talked and believed into was the making a product of differentiation. The product what we brought in was so unique that consumers to forced to buy. Price was never something that we advertised to the consumers but what we gave them was the product definition and features and then the price was the last highlight.