Local smartphone industry witnesses a boom with Make in India

Electronic Systems is among the 25 sectors covered under the ‘Make in India’ campaign. The impact is clearly visible in the recent trends observed in the smartphone industry, which is witnessing an interesting shift towards the local-made phones at higher price points.

The ‘Make in India’ campaign continued to promote local manufacturing as more than 25 vendors are now manufacturing smartphones locally in India. More than two-thirds of the smartphones shipped in Q1 2016 (April – June 2015) were assembled within the country. A few vendors, who are currently assembling mobile phones in India, are likely to start manufacturing components like batteries, chargers and data cables owing to encouraging support from central and state governments. India is looked at as a key market forsmartphones as it has a low penetration (less than 20 percent) and owing to the anticipated growth in demand, India is slated to be one of the biggest markets for smartphones.

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A recent report published by market research firm CyberMedia Research (CMR) revealed that “made in India” handsets contributed 67 percent to total sales. India shipped a total of 52.8 million handsets, which is a 4 percent decline compared to the number of handsets shipped in the same quarter last year. The contribution of “India brands” was up by seven percent – an all-time high of 45 percent. Interestingly, there was a subsequent dip in contribution by international brands. CMR includes ‘Make in India’ brands as all domestic brands and Samsung’s domestic production.

Mobile phone production in India has crossed 100 million from 68 million in 2014 with leading companies setting up their manufacturing base in the country. Many brands have pitched in like LG has announced its new ‘K’ series to be the first in its portfolio to be manufactured in India. The LG K7 has been launched for Rs 9,500, while the LG K10 has been launched for Rs 13,500.

Gionee is going model by model and has already started assembling P103 and S+ smartphone models in India and plans to manufacture all Gionee devices in the country very soon. Samsung, the country’s largest phone seller, which has been manufacturing in India since 2006, has added its capacity at its plant in Noida and is looking for opening a new plant.

Micromax, India’s second-largest phone maker, has started a plant at Rudrapur in Uttarakhand and is planning investments in Telangana, Rajasthan, and Maharashtra. Lava has so far invested Rs 50 crore to build a facility in Noida to assemble one million units a month. A second unit, with an investment of Rs 1,200 crore and a capacity of 10 million units a month, is on the drawing board. Karbonn is investing Rs 200 crore in two plants, one in Noida and another in Bengaluru and many more.

According to Faisal Kawoosa, lead analyst with CMR’s Telecom Practice, an interesting shift has been observed in the market in the Rs 10,000-Rs 15,000 bracket which contributed the maximum (22 percent) towards the smartphone shipments. Usually, the price bracket of Rs 6,000-Rs 8,000 used to be the prime contributor. This increase has been primarily due to introduction of shipments by Chinese smartphone maker Leco and launch of new handsets from Lenovo, Oppo, LG, Panasonic, Micromax, Intex, LYF (RJio), and Vivo in Rs 10,000-Rs 15,000 price bands.

The report also points out that the average selling prices for smartphones in India have gone up. While in the first quarter of 2015, the average selling price for a smartphone was Rs 10,364, in the first quarter of 2016, it was Rs 12,983. This suggests that Indians are now spending more on smartphones, and what was defined as a budget smartphone till now, isn’t really the case anymore.

The Make in India campaign is crafting a manufacturing core in the nation which is the first step to enhancing the contribution of the manufacturing sector towards the GDP. With Make in India being a buzzword around the world, we can expect more and more investments in Indian market to boost the economy and growth in all the 25 sectors covered under the campaign.

article source: YourStory / 20-May-2016

Amazon India teams up with govt to boost handloom sales

The partnership allows Amazon India to engage with weavers in Kota in Rajasthan, Nadia in West Bengal, Bargarh in Odisha and Bijoynagar in Assam.


Amazon India today forged a partnership with Development Commissioner Handloom of the Union Ministry of Textiles under which it will educate, train and enable cooperatives and weavers to directly sell their products on the online portal. 

The partnership allows Amazon India to engage with weavers in Kota in Rajasthan, Nadia in West Bengal, Bargarh in Odisha and Bijoynagar in Assam. 

The products will carry government certifications 'India Handloom Brand' and 'Handloom Mark', ensuring availability of quality products to shoppers across the globe, Amazon India said in a release here. The company has already deployed teams in the four states and conducted workshops in Kota and Bargarh, introducing weavers to online selling and Amazon.in's seller services that will help them kickstart their online business, it said. 

Alok Kumar, Development Commissioner (Handlooms), said "Authentic handloom products have always found resonance with shoppers. Our partnership with Amazon India will allow weavers to satiate this demand by making their products available in all corners of India. Weavers will also get the right value for their offerings through this direct sales channel." Gopal Pillai, Director & GM, Seller Services, Amazon India, said all products listed by weavers will be available through the 'Crafted in India' store on Amazon.in that was launched recently, which aims to bring the rich Indian heritage of handicraft and handlooms to Indian consumers' doorsteps.

source: MoneyControl 19-May-2016

Flipkart and Snapdeal to face more heat as Tatas get into e-commerce

The Tata Group through Tata Unistore is launching their e-commerce platform, Tata CLiQ.  The website and apps (iOS and Android) will go live on May 27. The Tata Group owns offline chains – Westside, Landmark and Croma (operated by Infiniti Retail).

Tata CLiQ (Image source: iamwire.com)

CLiQ will offer apparel, electronics and footwear products to begin with, and plans to introduce more categories in the coming months.

KRS Jamwal, Executive Director at Tata Industries Ltd, said there are two kinds of retailers in the market. The first are the pure play e-tailers, who have no links with brick-and-mortar stores and the other set sees online commerce as an extension to their brick-and-mortar businesses. He said,

Unlike e-retail 1.0 where two different sets of people are doing retail by themselves, we plan to merge these two different sides so the reality on the ground is that much more integrated.

In 2012, Infiniti Retail which runs electronics and durables retail store Croma launched cromaretail.com, but the website and retail chain were treated as separate entities. It was only in July 2015 that the company chose an integrated strategy across its online and offline platforms.

The Tata group isn’t the first conglomerate to foray into e-commerce. In October 2015, Aditya Birla Group launched a new online fashion store, abof.com, taking their brick and mortar stores online. This was followed by Reliance Industries, which launched its online fashion retail platform, Ajio, last month. Similarly, last week Arvind Ltd went live with their omni channel platform NNNow.com.

The Mahindra group in September 2015, also expressed their plans to launch their e-commerce venture M2ALL.com.

It is a rapidly growing e-commerce market that is attracting these conglomerates. Although e-commerce accounts for just two percent of the overall sales in the retail sector, industry bodies like Retailers Association of India claim this number will grow to almost 11 percent of the overall retail sales by 2019. Goldman Sachs predicts the e-commerce market to be facilitating 2.5 per cent of India’s gross domestic product (GDP) by 2030. The current size of the industry is worth $20 billion, which is expected to grow 15 times, reaching $300 billion in value by 2030.

Double trouble

The entry of these offline majors will add to the woes of homegrown e-commerce majors – Flipkart and Snapdeal. Over the past year, competition has heated up between Flipkart, Amazon India and Snapdeal. According to reports, in June 2015, Amazon India caught up with Flipkart after overtaking Snapdeal in terms of traffic.

It was reported this year that Amazon saw its market share, in terms of shipments, gallop to over 21 percent from 14 percent, making it the only major player to increase its share from a year ago. Flipkart slipped from 43 percent in March 2015 to 37 percent in March 2016. While Snapdeal slipped from 19 percent to 14-15 percent of the market share. Amazon has infused Rs 6,700 crore into its India unit since January 2015. Since their last investment in July 2015, Flipkart has seen consecutive valuation markdowns by its investors Morgan Stanley (marking down the value of its holding by 27 percent), Fidelity Rutland Square Trust II and Valic Co. In April, it was reported that e-commerce marketplaces – Flipkart and Snapdeal – were facing trouble raising their next rounds of funding.

With these new deep-pocketed players entering the e-commerce market, the balance of power in the industry could change dramatically in coming months.

article source: YourStory .com / May 18, 2016

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Ratan Tata invests in MUrgency, a medical emergency response startup

article source: yourstory .com 17-May-2016

Ratan Tata, Chairman Emeritus of Tata Sons, announced on Tuesday that he has invested in San Francisco based medical emergency response startup, MUrgency Inc. The mobile app makes emergency response available with one tap on a mobile phone in under 9.0 minutes in urban areas.

Ms. Sweta Mangal, Director, Global Emergency Response, Mr. Shaffi Mather, Founder and Ms. Manjula Easwaran, Head, Finance, MUrgency Inc. with Mr. Ratan N Tata.

Story so far

MUrgency Inc(ONE GLOBAL EMERGENCY RESPONSE NETWORK) was founded in 2014 by Indian social entrepreneur Shaffi Mather in Silicon Valley and incubated out of Stanford ChangeLabs. The startup also recently received an investment from Kris Gopalakrishnan and S. D. Shibulal led Axilor Ventures.

MUrgency launched their service in the tri-city area in Punjab, India on 16 February, 2016 with a a responder network of 36 hospital emergency rooms, over 40 ambulances and 350 medical professionals. MUrgency is slated to launch service in Amritsar and Jalandhar in the last week of May, 2016 and cover entire state of Punjab by end June, 2016. Sweta Mangal, Director, Global Emergency Response, MUrgency Inc. said,

While our primary goal is to develop the emergency medical response network, we are widening our service to be an inclusive and comprehensive medical service platform on your mobile phone. The app is live on iOS and Android app stores and several features are accessible across the world already.

In 2004, Shaffi, Sweta and their three friends founded Ziqitza Healthcare Limited(ZHL). Starting from one ambulance,  the company eventually became the largest emergency ambulance service in the developing world with operations in 17 states in India and the Gulf (Middle East). ZHL has grown to over 1500 ambulances and 6000 employees transporting between 8000 and 10000 patients every day. As an estimate, ZHL has transported over 5.20 million patients and delivered 10000 babies on board.

MUrgency recently won two startup tech competitions in the US – Startup of the Year at Startup Grind 2016, Redwood City and First Prize in Health & Wearables at SXSW Festival, Austin. MUrgency charges about INR 350 for every emergency response and passes 80 percent of the revenue to the medical professional who responds and pockets the remaining 20 percent. Going forward, Shaffi and his team aim to build a cross-subsidy model, where the ‘absolute poor can afford MUrgency’s services without having to pay.’

MUrgency Inc. will use the proceeds of the funding to augment technology and scale operations besides leveraging Tata’s experience and network as a global business leader to develop the emergency response network globally through appropriate partnerships. The company plans to make its services available across India by 2018 and around the world by 2020. Shaffi, Founder, MUrgency Inc said,

Tata’s involvement is an affirmation of the importance of a reliable emergency medical response network for the world and of course India to save lives which are otherwise lost for want of timely medical attention. He clearly wanted us to launch and grow the network in India first before taking it overseas. Mr. Tata’s investment in MUrgency will help attract leading talent to the company and major partnerships beyond India.

Sector overview

In an earlier interview with YourStory, Shaffi had stated that 90 per cent of the world’s population lacks timely medical assistance, which is the most critical factor in saving lives. These problems affect both developing and developed countries alike. A recent report from Fortune states that Americans make 240 million calls to 911 each year, but chances of getting a quick fix on a distress call’s location can range as low as 10%. And according to a 2014 FCC study, location accuracy improvements could save over 10,000 lives annually. So leveraging the power of smartphones and its inbuilt location tracking features through safety apps are a good step forward.

There is a lot of interest in improving healthcare in India. Ratan Tata has made more than 25 investments in startups in the last two years. Healthcare startups that have benefitted from his investments include Lybrate, an online doctor consulting start-up, Swasth India, a startup which focusses on cancer treatment and health data analytics and Invictus Oncology, a cancer therapeutic startup.

Flipkart's Ekart to tap into Kirana stores to power last-mile deliveries in 28 cities

article source: ET tech 13-May-2016

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Ekart, the logistics arm of online marketplace Flipkart has signed on a network of 700 corner stores across 28 cities as part of its alternative delivery programme.

Ekart, the logistics arm of online marketplace Flipkart has signed on a network of 700 corner stores across 28 cities as part of its alternative delivery programme.

Through the programme, the company plans on powering last-mile delivery using personnel at the corner stores in a radius of 500 to 800 metres.

This would improve the success of delivery attempts by 10%, a significant number for Flipkart which currently delivers over 3 lakh shipments daily.

As part of its alternative delivery programme, which has been in the works for the past eight to nine months, Ekart had set up experience centres and pick-up zones at tech parks, where office employees can collect their orders from a single outlet and also partnered with 280 outlets of Apollo Pharmacy, where customers can pick up their shipments, as reported by ET earlier this year.

The move comes at a time when Flipkart is looking to fulfill majority of its orders through Ekart and is strengthening its logistics business to serve third-party orders as well.

As reported earlier by ET, Binny Bansal who took over as CEO of Flipkart in January islooking to position the logistics arm as a standalone business.



"The current tie-up with small corner stores, photocopy centres, mobile stores and internet cafes gives us greater scalability to serve towns, which give small volumes of 25 to 30 orders per day and helps the corner stores augment their income at a small premium," said Neeraj Aggarwal, vice-president of operations at Flipkart.

He added that out of 14% of Ekart's volumes, which are routed through the alternative delivery model, half was directed to the corner stores in catchment areas, which give high volumes to Flipkart.

"Right now we are doing over 15,000 orders a day through corner stores and by March 2017, the alternate delivery model will be used to fulfil 35% of Ekart's overall volumes," added Aggarwal.

Snapdeal claims to have invested $300 million in supply chain, logistics in 18 months

article sourced : EtTech 13-May-2016

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Snapdeal has pumped in $300 million (about Rs 1,990 crore) over the last 18 months to strengthen its supply chain and logistics and facilitate the increase in shipment volumes.

The city-based firm has seen 1.9 times increase in shipment volumes from 1.29 lakh daily shipments last year to 2.5 lakh this year.

"We have seen a significant increase of 1.9 times in shipment volumes. This is on account of increase in assortment on Snapdeal from 12 million to 35 million over the year. We have also expanded our seller base which helped increase shipments," Snapdeal Chief Customer Experience Officer Jayant Sood told PTI.

He added that reports by PwC and RedSeer Consulting suggest that Snapdeal's promised delivery time is the shortest across India.

"The number of sellers on our platform has increased three fold from 1,00,000 at the beginning of 2015 to more than 3,00,000 in 2016... We have invested $300 million towards logistics and customer experience," he said.

He added that the company has 2 million sq ft of warehousing space across 63 sites and 45 cities.

Sood said the seller expansion has also led to a huge increase in the goods available on its platform.

"Unlike other competing marketplaces, which have their own sellers under various arrangements, we have no such conflicting interests. This makes Snapdeal more attractive for sellers," he said.

He said Snapdeal has seen 60% month-on-month increase in FMCG sales, while the books category grew by 300%. Also, there is a strong increase in uptake in the home decor category.

"This blend of expansion of high frequency categories drives high repeat usage, which is enabled by reliable experience each time," he added.

Besides, sharp focus on repeat users and initiatives like same day refunds is helping Snapdeal "chart a distinct course", he said.

Snapdeal has pumped in $300 million (about Rs 1,990 crore) over the last 18 months to strengthen its supply chain and logistics.