'Rich on features, value for money' – the Mantra for Lemon Mobiles 

Lemon Mobiles is investing really big in India. It is in the process of investing Rs. 150 Cr in a manufacturing unit for mobile phones in Noida, while also announcing to invest Rs 100 cr in a new manufacturing unit for tempered glass in Haryana. The company is also going to set up a new R&D and testing lab in Shenzhen, China. Kapil Chugh, CMD - Lemon Mobiles tells VARINDIA of how these investments will spell big growth for the company -    

How do you see India handset market? 
India being one of the fastest growing smart phone industry. The smartphone market is experiencing growth in all the horizons, whether we look into the sales and demand in the market or when we see POS. Worldwide shipping of smartphone has declined but while we study the Indian shipment graph, it has grown as compared to last year’s graph. The smartphone Industry is growing and will grow but with a slow speed than the past records. Vendors would be the drivers and trend setters with significant volumes. It is a fact that smartphones are demanded more because of its advanced applications, features and trendy style.

   
How do you plan to tap the Indian smartphone and feature phone market?
High end phones dominate the market because of the better technology, good-looks and features used in these phones. But we are concentrating on manufacturing good phones with all the quality like good features, attractive looks which costly phones doesn’t have in the pocket/wallet friendly cost, making us stand out from the crowd. Being the part of the industry we have seen people from remote areas using budget phones and some percentage of people from the urban area, mostly who find costly phones complicated and confusing. Mostly demand from rural areas is high as compared to metropolitan cities where there are more tech savvy people with less demand for the budget phones. Speaking for the industry in India, through imports only mobile phones demands are made. Most of the domestic mobile phone’s production is restrained to assembling/packaging of semi-knocked down kits because of a fragile manufacturing system in the country which results in limited potentialities across various steps of the manufacturing value chain.

How do you try to be at the cutting edge amidst competition?
We started to work with the agenda of ‘rich on features and value for money’ and are continuing to work on the same. Your supply only depends on the demand of your customers. To survive in the market with a huge number of competitions, we try to manufacture our products as per the demand of our customers. We have kept our phone prices really low. For instance, people also love to have a phone with long durability as in the race of mobile phones people sell the best technology but all these companies are missing on the long life of mobile phones no matter how expensive your phone is. Lemon Mobiles makes sure that all handsets that is manufactured under Lemon Mobiles should have long battery durability.

How Lemon Mobiles is participating in the Make in India project?
Make in India and Digital India are the calling card for the people who like to invest in India’s growth. It has pushed the growth rate by motivating manufacturers, investors, consumers etc and cut down the skill gap by bringing out new programmes for the people.We are a strong believer of ‘Digital magic’ and Lemon Mobiles has been very vocal about ‘Digital India’. We have witnessed how digital revolution in many countries has helped the countries grow in terms of Economy. Likewise, to rev up the economy of the country and to re-chart India’s growth story, the current government of India had introduced both ‘make in India’ and ‘digital India’ campaigns. Now that we already have affordable internet plans in the market, affordable phones can solve the problem towards a digitally strong India because we lack internet connectivity and educational content. Ou manufacturing mobile phone manufacturing unit in NOIDA, Uttar Pradesh has generated many jobs for people. With the launch of the tempered Glass manufacturing unitin Haryana unit, Lemon Mobiles will generate another 3000 minimum jobs for people.

What are your marketing plans and strategy around support?
We are consistently building equity in different markets to cater to the interests of customers as well as the retailers. We are going to implement aggressive 360-degree marketing strategy across all mediums – ATL, BTL and Digital, which will establish a strong brand recall in the market. We have 700+ service centers spread all across the country that assure instant check and ‘hand-to-hand’ replacement, without any delay. Along with on-ground retail promotions and in-store activities, we will be actively promoting Lemon Mobiles through leading digital Platforms and blogging sites throughout the year. Further, we are developing a product portfolio in align with our online strategy and market expansion plan. 

Aparna Mullick
aparna@varindia.com