NOTHING LIKE ANYTHINGBy:Amol AzadIshan AggarwalRajat Singla

About Micromax

Micromax is one of the leading Indian Telecom Companies with 23 domestic offices across the country and international offices in Hong Kong, USA, Dubai and now in Nepal. With a futuristic vision and an exhaustive R&D at its helm, Micromax has successfully generated innovative technologies that have revolutionized the telecom consumer space.

Micromax is on a mission to successfully overcome the technological barriers and constantly engender “life enhancing solutions”.

The company’s vision is to develop path-breaking technologies and efficient processes that incubate newer markets, enliven customer aspirations and continue to make Micromax a trusted market leader amongst people. The Micromax ideology stems from its rooted belief in ‘Innovation’ and delivering “nothing short of the best”.

Micromax has a lot of “firsts” to its credit on their versatile product portfolio. It was the first to introduce: Handsets with 30 days battery backup, Handsets with Dual SIM / Dual Standby, Handsets Switching Networks (GSM - CDMA), Aspirational Qwerty Keypad Handsets, Operator Branded 3G Handsets, OMH CDMA Handsets, etc.

With a 360 degree advertising and marketing strategy sketched out, the company has an optimistic outlook for the telecom consumer space. Currently present in more than 40,000 stores across the country, the company plans to have an aggressive market incursion to reach out to its customers through 70,000 operational stores in the coming year.

One of the major aspects that contribute towards the substantial monthly growth of Micromax is its 80% sales in the rural areas.

After building a strong presence in the rural market, where the prominence of both subscribers and operators is rapidly increasing,

Micromax’ is now progressively moving towards establishing its foothold in the competitive urban towns as well.

With young enthusiasts as its anchor, Micromax Informatics Limited created a niche for itself in the telecommunication industry. Micromax ventured into the telecommunication industry with an end-to-end solution of Fixed Wireless Devices and Wireless Data Cards.

In the year 2008, after delivering upon the technology of fixed wireless-powering desired products, the company forayed into one of the most predominant genres of telecommunication – Mobile handsets. Since then Micromax has received commendable response for its unique and interesting handsets.

Innovation, Cost-Effective, Credible and an Insightful R&D, have now become synonymous to Micromax in the telecom vertical.

Today Micromax has become a brand which people relate and look up to for realizing their individual device preferences and other out-of-the-box solutions.

In 2008 Micromax ventured into the mobile handset market

The brand wanted to create a base before taking on the large players

GO-TO- MARKET STRATEGY--Micromax concentrated on the rural market first.

Micromax launched its first phone in the rural market with a very unique USP- 30 days battery standby time

The first product was a big success -- Micromax X1i priced at Rs 2150 was lapped up by rural market.

SUCCESS OF X1iCompany to go aggressively into the

market Tapping the rural market is not an easy

task. There is severe logistics pressure in

servicing these marketsEstablish DISTRIBUTION NETWORK- 34

super distributors, 450 distributors and around 55,000 retailers.

Micromax has a lot of interesting and thoughtful products to its credit on their versatile product portfolio. It was the first to introduce:

1. Handsets with 30 days battery backup2. Handsets with Dual SIM / Dual Standby3. Handsets Switching Networks (GSM - CDMA)4. Aspirational Qwerty Keypad Handsets5. Operator Branded 3G Handsets6. OMH CDMA Handsets, etc.

DISTRIBUTION STRATEGYMicromax managed to make dealers pay in advance by offering

them more margins. It offered higher margins of 15 % margin, which is higher than the industry average of 6-10%.

Micromax managed this hurdle through strategy of more margins for advance payment.

It is not a new strategy to offer such kind of discounts for advance payments (cash discounts), but to make a retailer accept such an offer is indeed a remarkable feat .

To increase penetration in the Indian telecom market, Micromax Is bundling with telecom operators such as Aircel.

For better accessibly and prominence in the market, Micromax is coming up with 150 experience zones (exclusive stores) across the nation, in addition to ensuring bigger presence at the multi branded stores.

PRODUCT STRATEGYMicromax products were towards the lower end of the

pricing spectrum, the brand was focusing on adding more features at a reasonable price .

The focus was more on value than price.

A clear differentiation was a significant factor that aided the significant growth of micromax brand in Indian market.

The company in their website claims to have invested heavily in the product development.

The brand boast of launching many firsts in the market PRECISELY for this reason.

Besides the focus on product development, Micromax has invested heavily in brand building.

MICROMAX and CricketThe brand was one of the big spenders in the latest edition of IPL

IPL.Micromax has centered much of its brand building exercise

around cricket. The company believes that cricket promotions will prove to be a

great platform to reach out to the audience and give the brand an opportunity to bond with the youth.

With the cricket fever rising and cricket fans anxious for more action by the Indian squad, Micromax has formulated an innovative branding tactic to strengthen the brand image and develop creative brand integrations.

Micromax has taken up the title sponsorship for the entire Indian cricketing season from May 2010.

Micromax is also planning an innovative activation across the cricket season, breaking away from the vanilla branding that we are all used to. Activation will see some intelligent product placements, on ground- on air integrated product coverage and mentions, crowd branding and the brand will be visible on a digital platform on the ground throughout, adding to the technology stand point.

It was one of the principal sponsors of the South Africa VS India ODI series in 2010.

In the just concluded ‘Micromax cup’ as the name suggests it was the chief sponsor.

Most of the brand promotion for Macromax has been centered around products till last year

The ads are for individual products highlighting the product features and USPs.

BRAND BUILDING INITIATIVESMicromax, has shelled out a whopping Rs 100 crore for its brand

building initiative. It is targeting a wide base of new and existing subscribers, using a 360 degree media approach via multiple platforms.

It has allotted Rs 60 crore for ATL (above the line) advertising, of which print will take the maximum share, followed by TV and radio. Another Rs 40 crore will go into the BTL (below-the-line) initiatives. The communication has been launched in the beginning of 2010.

In 2009, the campaign was mostly product centric but this year, the efforts will be to create a brand that is aspired by all. Consumers have already experienced Micromax as a handset. Now, it is time for the consumers to remember ‘MICROMAX’ the brand.

Micromax Segmentation StrategyThere are three segments of handsets that it works with:

For the premium category, which is solely comprised of QWERTY keypad handsets, the focus will still remain 'easy chatting'. In fact, Micromax will tie up with social networking sites such as Facebook to ensure better connectivity and continuous communication for its QWERTY keypad model users.

In the multimedia segment, it will offer innovation and variety in its features such as radio, MP3 player and camera. Here, it plans to launch co branded phone along with MTV as 'MTV Music Phones'. The purpose is to add an oomph factor and gel well with the young consumers.

At the entry level, Micromax will play the 'variety' card. Today, at the entry level, not much variety is available. Handsets of all companies, available at Rs 1,200-1,300, look equally unimpressive. Micromax plan to change the face of the entry level phones while keeping the price more or less same.

On basis of ‘Target Audience’ Micromax has divided its target audience into three categories - the rural sector, the urban youth and the high profile users. Micromax is solely targeting the rural segment right now - and why not? After all, it promises the maximum number of consumers and all they demand from a handset is regular features at an affordable price. The youth segment is the second most important segment, whom the brand will appease with innovative features such as a memory card with more capacity, better music and camera quality and a trendy face value. For the third segment or the premium class 'technological innovation' will be the catchword.

BRAND'S PROMOTIONSCampaigns Micromax Facebook ad Gravity, MTV , (Co-Branded phones)EEZPad.

PHONY JOURNEY 30-DAY BATTERY PHONES April 2008: Rs 2,249; Now: Rs 1,999 The X1i, Micromax’s first phone, had a battery that could

give 17 hours of talk time and go 30 days on a single charge.

DUAL-SIM PHONES July 2008: Rs 1,999-12,999 For those who want two numbers but one handset.

PHONE-CUM-REMOTE May 2010: Rs 2,999 A mobile that can switch TV channels and even change the AC temperature

PHONE-CUM-STEREO Feb 2010: Rs 4,999 With 3D surround sound, fed by Yamaha and Wolfson

BLING Feb 2010: Rs 5,500 A big hit with women, comes with Swarovski embellishments.

IN THE WORKS A mosquito-repellent phone. A phone that can be used as a computer mouse.

MARKET SHARE

Micromax is currently the third-largest GSM vendor in the Indian market,

A share of 8.1%, perhaps just a few marks behind Samsung

Samsung at the second position has 10.4% control, as per market reports.

Nokia with 52.7% share is the number 1 vendor

Source : Forbes India, 27 Feb. 2010

Micromax has been selling anywhere around a million handsets every month, for the past year, and as company officials state, it has earned about Rs.15 billion in revenues during the past year.

The Indian handset market is estimated to have sold about 130 million handsets units in the last calendar year alone, which implies, that if we were to consider just the sales during the past 12 months, Micromax has a market share of 9.3%, much closer (as compared to the previously stated 8.1%) to the 10.4% share of Samsung!

Strategies in a nutshellCorporate Level strategies:

Expansion strategyResource allocation: heavy investment in R&D, lately heavy

investment in brand building.Wide portfolio catering to diverse segments.

Business Level strategies:Unique Fusion of Cost Leadership and Product

Differentiation.Following a Frontal and Flanking attack strategy.Products are mostly in the embryonic and growth stages.

Functional Level StrategiesProduct InnovationRapid channel expansionTargeting widest customer base ( Rural +

Youth)360 Degree advertisingInnovative advertisingEffective and accurate segmentationExcellent Supply Chain management

(Delivering value to each channel member).

Also targeting niches such as exclusive Women’s phones

We can see from the history that they were already into the wireless devices industry so they had a prior ‘Learning’ about the mobile industry.

They have built a solid base for a full scale assault on the market leader.

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