Exclusive: G'Five to introduce two 3G phones by October

Know Your Mobile: G’Five is counted amongst the top 10 mobile brands in the world. What would be the key areas you are targeting in India?

Arshit Pathak: We have a strong presence in the Indian sub-continent and in African markets. We are a young company unlike many of our peers. We are still building our brand. For us the basic philosophy is that we cannot target premium to our consumers. What we believe is that we need to give them compelling products at competitive prices.

The reason behind us being one of the top 10 mobile brands is that we connect well with our consumer – who is a mass-market consumer. We give them good quality products, keep the pricing competitive. In a nutshell, we keep the consumer happy. That is what we are doing and that is what we will continue to do.

KYM: Several manufacturers have made a foray into the Indian mobile market. How does G’Five plan to create a niche in the mobile segment?

Arshit Pathak: I think there are two parts to this question. The first part is very simple – What is the consumer point of view?

A consumer is one who does not want to pay too much money but he wants almost every feature. From a consumer point of view, we focus on providing innovative products. Innovation for us is not launching a very high-end product. Innovation means making technology available to a mass-market consumer.

We introduced a projector phone, we launched a phone using which you can video chat, even without 3G. Very recently we launched a phone with which we are giving a 1000 games free. We launched the ‘Movie King’ phones which uses compression technology to encompass 30-40 full movies in a 2 GB/3 GB card. Not just that, we are empowering the consumer to experience high-quality content by giving them 20 top class movies free-of-cost. 

The most innovation nowadays happens in the high-end smartphone market. But not much is happening in the mass market and that is where we come in. That is in fact, the fun part of it.

We also concentrate on providing more to consumers. For example, while most brands provide a 365 days warranty, we provide a 500 days warranty. We already have more than 500 service centers. Coming to the second part – How we differentiate from others in the market?

There are some players that are established multi-national companies, who have been in the market for last 10-15 yrs and they are very clear where they want to go. Most of them focus on high-end customers. So, everybody is coming out with a smartphone, a 3G phone, all that stuff.

If you see most Indian brands, none of them have their own manufacturing; they all get their products from China. We, on the other hand are amongst the biggest manufacturers in the world. As a matter of fact, for the last 2-2.5 years, we are the largest exported brand out of China. This gives us a huge advantage over all our competitors. Most of our competitors don’t have manufacturing plants, R&D faculty or cost-control centers. The economy of scale is in our favor.

KYM: India is about to reach 1 billion mobile customers. How does that affect your product development strategy? While your consumer strategy is mass-market based, what is you manufacturing strategy?

Arshit Pathak: If you follow contemporary trends, you would realize that in December 2010, the total addition in consumers was 18-19 million consumers. Last month, it was 5 million consumers. So the net subscriber addition is dropping. It is almost one –fourth of what it was around the same time last year. This is a very fast de-growth. If we interpret this trend, it would reflect that the consumer strategy of manufacturers has almost come to a saturation point. Not too many customers are left to be acquired. All the people who can use mobile phones are using mobile phones.

Is that a bad thing? Of course not. Every market reaching that kind of saturation, some or the other time. How would that reflect as a strategy for handset manufacturers? The average life of a mobile phone is considered to be 1.5-2 years due to either consistent wear and tear or upgradation in technology.

Every year you get a phone that is much better and much cheaper than the earlier phone. The Indian consumer is not a first-time buyer; he is already using a phone and is an upgrade customer. That is what comprises the biggest chunk of consumers. If we align that with the socio-economic situation in the country, lets say, a customer who bought a basic Nokia handset some years back for Rs 2000-5000.
This person would now have an even better purchasing parity. This is how the Indian mobile market is changing. When he first bought a phone, he might not have been comfortable with technology, but by now, he would have used most features of a phone and would have grown to have a level of comfort with technology. That is what impacts our market strategy. We know that the market has changed tremendously along with the change in consumer behavior. And that is why we have ventured into the smartphone, 3G phone and tablet markets. We have aligned our market strategy with changes in consumer behavior.

KYM: Do we see G’Five venturing into the high-end smartphone market in the coming future?

Arshit Pathak: See, mass-market strategy has always worked for us. We are not planning to renounce that anytime. While saying that, we also believe that the high-end mobile market has a lot of prospects. Many big brands are vacating the market space simply because they are not competitive enough. I think that we as a brand are quite suitable for it. We would always like to acquire a new set of consumers but without moving from our core area of interest – the mass market.

KYM: Are there any other launches coming from G’Five for 2011?

Arshit Pathak: Just this month we have launched 6 phones. By the end of this month, we would be launching at least 2 3G phones. In the coming months, you would find another 4-5 models being launched by G’Five. The upcoming phones would also include some smartphones. Not only that we are also working on a smart feature phones category. These phones would not be smartphones but they would have smartphone features such as touch experience. The OS may be proprietary.

KYM: Who do you consider your major competitors and what is your strategy to stay in the game?

Arshit Pathak: In the Indian mobile market, most of the brands have been similarly positioned. We attend to the same market. The consumer needs remain the same. We do not compete with brand A or brand A although we recognize there are other brands targeting the same consumers as us. The consumer that we focus upon is a price-conscious, feature conscious consumer.

We try to offer better value-for-money for the price we are offering and whichever brand is successful in doing that will usurp the market share. Rather than competing with other brands, we keep the consumer as our primary focus.  For e.g. if someone’s offering a 1000 mAh battery in say, Rs. 1200, can offer a 1200 mAh battery at the same price?

Also check out: G’Five WiFi, 3G enabled tablet arrives in Oct-Nov