It took time to come to India. But now that it’s here, the firm is giving nightmares to leading brands in the Indian handset market. What has made G’Five click? Critically, will it become the #2 soon?
Seven years back, you could have betted on a roulette about how the utterly unknown Chinese handset manufacturer G’Five would never see the better part of positive growth, leave alone leave the Chinese shores – and you could have won a King’s ransom for each bet that you made. Most didn’t even know that G’Five existed. Many still don’t. In short, when it started selling handsets, few gave G’Five a chance to even survive. For the world, Nokia was then the head of the handset tribe, controlling a 42.2% pie of the worldwide sales to end users. Nokia was the metaphorical emblem for Western dominance, and overtaking the giant for a lesser known Chinese handset maker, whose product quality was criticised from the very beginning, seemed an illogically distant dream – if at all even a dream. Today, forget the roulette, the situation is fantastically different. It is a completely different tale than the one that was expected, and especially so in India, where the majority of the 1.3 billion-strong population are turning their attention to low-priced handsets. First there was Micromax which destroyed the previously held concepts of handset marketing, and now G’Five seems to have caught on faster than Micromax. As per the most recent Q2, 2010 report by IDC, G’Five is the third-largest handset seller in the Indian market today, with a 7.3% share, and is just an arm’s length away from becoming #2. In reality, displacing the once dominant Nokia, which had a market share of 78.8% when 2006 started (a figure which has dropped to 36.3% today), which just about appeared an eccentric objective, seems to be more plausible now.
But then, one great quarter does not a market leader make – and G’Five knows that pretty well. Almost amazingly, G’Five has attempted to market itself right at the base ground level, rather than just depending upon word-of-mouth or corporate sales. A quick visit to the largest mobile-handset market in Asia, situated in Karol Bagh (close to central New Delhi) is enough to provide evidence of G’Five’s growing ground level might. There are over 20,000 sellers in this market and the place is flooded with Chinese handsets and look-alikes – and G’Five is one of the few ‘branded’ products you could find in every handset shop. The mass market buyers apparently love it; as for the sellers, they have their reservations and preferences! But even here, G’Five has scored a tactical victory over both the premium brands and the low-priced competitors. “The G’Five handsets offer a very handsome margin, and therefore, we try and push this brand to the low-price loving customers,” says Siddharth Tiwari, a trader who has been in the business (and the market) for over a decade. And to imagine G’Five offers no warranty, no high-quality or service and yet walks away handsomely with the green bills!
Seven years back, you could have betted on a roulette about how the utterly unknown Chinese handset manufacturer G’Five would never see the better part of positive growth, leave alone leave the Chinese shores – and you could have won a King’s ransom for each bet that you made. Most didn’t even know that G’Five existed. Many still don’t. In short, when it started selling handsets, few gave G’Five a chance to even survive. For the world, Nokia was then the head of the handset tribe, controlling a 42.2% pie of the worldwide sales to end users. Nokia was the metaphorical emblem for Western dominance, and overtaking the giant for a lesser known Chinese handset maker, whose product quality was criticised from the very beginning, seemed an illogically distant dream – if at all even a dream. Today, forget the roulette, the situation is fantastically different. It is a completely different tale than the one that was expected, and especially so in India, where the majority of the 1.3 billion-strong population are turning their attention to low-priced handsets. First there was Micromax which destroyed the previously held concepts of handset marketing, and now G’Five seems to have caught on faster than Micromax. As per the most recent Q2, 2010 report by IDC, G’Five is the third-largest handset seller in the Indian market today, with a 7.3% share, and is just an arm’s length away from becoming #2. In reality, displacing the once dominant Nokia, which had a market share of 78.8% when 2006 started (a figure which has dropped to 36.3% today), which just about appeared an eccentric objective, seems to be more plausible now.
But then, one great quarter does not a market leader make – and G’Five knows that pretty well. Almost amazingly, G’Five has attempted to market itself right at the base ground level, rather than just depending upon word-of-mouth or corporate sales. A quick visit to the largest mobile-handset market in Asia, situated in Karol Bagh (close to central New Delhi) is enough to provide evidence of G’Five’s growing ground level might. There are over 20,000 sellers in this market and the place is flooded with Chinese handsets and look-alikes – and G’Five is one of the few ‘branded’ products you could find in every handset shop. The mass market buyers apparently love it; as for the sellers, they have their reservations and preferences! But even here, G’Five has scored a tactical victory over both the premium brands and the low-priced competitors. “The G’Five handsets offer a very handsome margin, and therefore, we try and push this brand to the low-price loving customers,” says Siddharth Tiwari, a trader who has been in the business (and the market) for over a decade. And to imagine G’Five offers no warranty, no high-quality or service and yet walks away handsomely with the green bills!
Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).
and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).
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