Micromax hopes to topple Samsung with 40 pc growth

2015 was the year of upheavals for Micromax after the chairman and the heads of finance, sales and R&D quit the company, followed by the CEO in early 2016. In the same year, competition spurred by new entrants from China, hit the company’s shipments, which were down 12.1 per cent year on year and 23.5 per cent quarter on quarter in the October-December 2015 period, according to International Data Corporation. The company’s profit growth in this financial year has been hurt, more so because of its investments in startups.
However, the promoters of Micromax Informatics have taken full operational control of the company and they are more determined than ever to reach the top. The plan is to dethrone Samsung Electronics, the current leader in India, the world’s fastest growing electronics market.
“Last year (our revenue) was around Rs 10,450 crore. In terms of our revenue we should be growing around 40 per cent revenue or so in 2016-17, in an industry which is not growing at all (250 million phones a year for the last two years). We’re leaders in the Rs 3,500 to Rs 10000 segment, highest growing category in the industry, where we have a 30 per cent market share,” Co-founder Rahul Sharma was quoted by The Economic Times as saying.
“To strengthen Rs 10-15,000 category, upgrade users to this category. We are in double digit around 11 per cent. In Russia we are no. 3, so our extension to CIS countries will be a natural progression. Our objective is to be the 5th largest, from being 10th largest worldwide. We’re not only looking at largest brand in India, that’s not the end game. Hence, we thought we need experts from outside. But somehow it didn’t work out,” he was further quoted by The Economic Times as saying on his strategy for 2016.
Micromax, which posted a profit of Rs 363.8 crore in FY15, expects to sell up to 56 million mobile phones in the country by March 2017, up 56 per cent from the 36 million handsets it expects to sell in the current financial year.