Transsion Sets Sights On Africa Market For Handset Exports

Chinese mobile handset major Transsion Group, a global conglomerate with a strong presence through Tecno and itel brands in India, is planning to export India-made cellular phones to Africa. In order to woo youths in India, especially in tier-II and -III cities, the group is banking on a special advertisement-cum-marketing blitz across social media, digital and soccer arena.

Arijeet Talapatra, CEO, Transsion India, told TOI: “By the year 2020, we would explore shipping handsets to the African continent from our Indian manufacturing units. It is a very good market for our range of handsets. The kind of manufacturing expansion in India that we have chalked out will help us expand our export market.”

The African Safari of affordable ‘Made in India’ handsets is likely to be possible as the group is embarking on a huge manufacturing spree over the next few years. “Our manufacturing plant in Noida has 2.5 sq ft area which houses 21 assembly lines, 11 packaging lines and two SMT lines. It has the capacity to manufacture 15 lakh feature phones and 6.5 lakh smartphones a month. We have a unique canvassing plans ,” said the Transsion India CEO.

The Hong Kong-based cellphone giant which has already made inroads into the Indian market with an aggressive pricing strategy and chalked out its plans to raise its offline sales share of Tecno to 10% from the current 5%, said Talapatra on Wednesday. On Thursday, Tecno has launched its new budget smartphone ‘Spark 4’ under the new sub-brand Spark, which will be priced in Rs 5,499-Rs 8,000 range in India.

According to the CEO, the group’s affordable brand, itel, is claimed to be the No. 1 in sub-Rs 5000 segment in India market as per the GSK data and it also bagged the top-three position in feature phone sales in 2018.

“In just one year, we have increased our customer base from four crore to over five crore for itel in India. With an aim to democratising technology with the 100-day replacement offer, itel forayed into the Indian market in April 2016. Its product portfolio comprises 13 smartphones and 19 feature phones,” added Talapatra on the sidelines of the itel A46 (with 2GB RAM and 32GB internal storage memory for Rs 4,999) handset launch on Tuesday.

The mobile maker is aiming at a 50,000-strong retailer footprint for Tecno in the next one year.―Times of India