NOTHING LIKE ANYTHING

By:
Amol Azad
Ishan
Aggarwal
  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 X1i
Company to go aggressively into the
market
 Tapping the rural market is not an easy
task.
There is severe logistics pressure in
servicing these markets
Establish 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 backup
2. Handsets with Dual SIM / Dual Standby
3. Handsets Switching Networks (GSM - CDMA)
4. Aspirational Qwerty Keypad Handsets
5. Operator Branded 3G Handsets
6. OMH CDMA Handsets, etc.
DISTRIBUTION STRATEGY
Micromax 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 STRATEGY
Micromax 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 Cricket
The 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 INITIATIVES
 Micromax, 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 Strategy
 There 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 PROMOTIONS
Campaigns
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 nutshell
Corporate Level strategies:
Expansion strategy

Resource 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 Strategies
Product Innovation

Rapid channel expansion

Targeting widest customer base ( Rural + Youth)

360 Degree advertising

Innovative advertising

Effective and accurate segmentation

Excellent 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.
THANK YOU