Big on offline, Yu sees 50 pc sales from brick-and-mortar stores

After almost a year of selling online, Micromax subsidiary Yu Televentures is now expanding its presence in the offline market and expects 50 per cent of its sales to come from the brick-and-mortar channel this year.
According to a PTI report: In November last year, Yu had started selling its handsets offline in partnership with Reliance Retail.
“We did a small trial with them (Reliance) and we received an overwhelming response. The online route has done well for us. But there is a huge market opportunity in the offline space and that is growing. That is why, we want to expand our presence in the offline market as well,” Founder, Yu Televentures, Rahul Sharma was quoted by PTI as saying.
He added that the company expects to be present across 50,000 points by the end of the year.
Yu’s rivals, Xiaomi and Motorola, which had launched operations in India through the online route, have expanded their presence in the offline space to cater to the huge demand in the Indian market.
India is one of the fastest growing smartphone markets globally.
Yu has launched its new handset — Yunicorn — priced at Rs 12,999. The device will be sold through Flipkart exclusively for a month and then through other channels.
Sharma said the company will not leverage its parent, Micromax’s distribution network.
“We are doing this on our own and are appointing distributors… In a year’s time, we expect online-offline sales ratio to be 50:50,” he was quoted by PTI as saying.
The company, which previously had 5 devices in its portfolio, sold over 2 million units.
Yunicorn features 5.5 inch-display, MediaTek Helio P10 1.8 Ghz octacore processor, 4GB RAM, 32 GB memory (expandable upto 128 GB), 13MP rear and 5MP front camera and 4,000 mAh battery. Yunicorn is based on Yu’s AOS or Android on Steroid operating system, which the company said is closest to the stock Android experience.
Its previous phones ran on Cyanogen OS. However, after its exclusivity with Cyanogen ended, Yu started working on its own project, ‘Project Highway’.
The company has also partnered Udio and Lybrate to integrate wallet and doctor-on-call service, respectively through its Around Yu service on the device.