Celkon aspires to become a 1200 Cr. company

Murali Retineni
Executive Director - Celkon Mobiles

In a chat with VARIndia, Murali Retineni, Executive Director - Celkon Mobiles discusses about the growth plans of Celkon along with its immediate goal and importance of Channel community to the company

Please brief us about Celkon.
Celkon started in the year 2010. It’s been a journey of four and a half years. It is a company that witnessed a consistent growth year-on-year ever since it is launched. We have closed our financial year 2010-11 at Rs. 80 crore, in the second financial year it was Rs. 300 crore, in third Rs. 650 crore and in the last financial year Rs. 925 crore. This year we are targeting a turnover of Rs. 1200 to 1300 crore. It’s been a steady journey for Celkon.
This growth is being triggered by smartphone penetration since last year. Till last year our revenue was more dominated by feature phones and this year we are expecting higher revenue generation from smartphones. Currently, we are operating in 7 international countries and expanded our reach to Sri Lanka, Nepal, Singapore, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Botswana. We are also opening up in few other countries like Kenya, Mauritius, Bangladesh, Mali and a couple of other West African countries.
While other device makers concentrate on selling, Celkon focuses on after sales support, which is why Celkon has not expanded pan India on the first go. Presently, we sell around 6.5 lakh handsets per month but we are aiming to take it to 10 lakh next quarter. We have 825 service centers at present which is in fact a big number compared to any other Indian brands; 15 are exclusive centers of Celkon.

Who are your Target audience?
We are targeting the young generation between 18-25 years majorly. 25-35 is also our target customers. We are good in feature phone, low-end and mid-end smartphone segment. Through our continuous efforts and quality we are trying to gain that confidence to move up the ladder to offer high-end handsets in good quantity.

Are phablets picking up in Indian market and is it going to substitute smartphones in future?
Phablets will not substitute. Smartphones are always handy in nature, which is something everybody prefers. During a survey conducted in a couple of cities, respondents replied that 4-4.5 inch handset is the ideal size for their usage but Phablets are generally of 5.5 or 6 inches.It is good for enterprise usage or people who are in trading business. But it will have its own niche market.

How much of your sell comes from Channel, retail and e-commerce?
E-commerce is picking up but we are not focusing on it. The current financial positioning of the company is purely because of its retail base. So if we launch few models only with online it will hurt the interests of general traders (GT). So it is not the prime focus of Celkon to only supply through e-commerce. If we launch any handset for online traders then we make sure similar handset is also available for a GT. For Celkon the traditional distribution is occupying the lion share.