Gionee India eyes top 5 slot

Kolkata:

Gionee

, one of the leading Chinese mobile brands in India, is looking at a slot in top five

handset

makers by the end of this fiscal. In little over three years, it has grabbed 5% marketshare here. Arvind Rajnish Vohra, country CEO and managing director of Gionee, told reporters here that it has set a target of achieving 8% marketshare in India by end of this fiscal. “We should have 7-8% marketshare by March 2016,” he added. In India, Gionee is owned by a company called

Syntech Technologies

where

Vohra

has 26% stake and the remaining stake is with Syntech Technologies, Hong Kong. Vohra was here for the launch of the new brand identity of Gionee “make smiles”. The company will be spending Rs 150 crore to roll out the new brand identity. According to the Gionee MD, it is hoping to match the sales of last three years in this fiscal itself. The company has so far sold eight million mobile handsets and has set a target to sell 8 million in 2016-17. “This is a huge task but is achievable,” he added. Based on this ambitious sales target, Gionee is expecting $0.5 billion turnover (Rs 3,200 crore) from Indian operation in this fiscal. From the very beginning Gionee has followed a strategy of giving thrust on physical retailing rather than e-retailing. “Most of the Chinese peers concentrated on e-retailing but our strategy was different, which is now paying dividend. I always believed in physical presence and the arbitrage in price in e-retailing in product like mobile cannot last for long,” he added. Gionee has 250 brand stores and 350 service centres across India.