Numbers speak for him: Realme sold more than 6 million Realme 5 series devices in India last year.
Numbers speak for him: Realme sold more than 6 million Realme 5 series devices in India last year.
Technology startups in the US have a favourite place to start the innings: garages. In India, garages are a luxury as they come with expensive bungalows so a tiny meeting room with a couple of chair hs is considered a godsend among the fraternity.
This is exactly what Madhav Sheth — a distributor for Samsung mobile phones in the past , and now the CEO of Realme that is billed as the fastest growing tech-lifestyle brand in India – was given in May 2018 to create some ripples in an already crowded market.
Here is the report card for Realme’s first financial year: Revenue hit Rs 15,000 crore and smartphone shipments reached over 20.5 million units in 2019 (year-on-year growth of a whopping 500 per cent from 2018).
The phenomenal growth – despite cutting-throat competition from the market leader Xiaomi in the same price-segment – has only made Madhav more humble, who now has a swanky third-floor office in the hub of Gurugram – two floors below the big brother Oppo.
“People criticized me when I launched my first product with a renewed focus on the chipset and internals while not including the fingerprint sensor. They said this is not the product for a market like India. They probably did not know that I was well aligned in the distribution space and understood the online customers much better. I knew what they want online across price points,” Sheth told IANS in a freewheeling chat at an extremely colourful Realme office.
Numbers speak for him: The company sold more than 6 million Realme 5 series devices in India last year and took manufacturing to 3.5 million units per month, with 50 per cent local sourcing.
According to Counterpoint Research, Realme grabbed the fourth spot in India in the third quarter (July-September period) last year with 16 per cent market share – behind Xiaomi, Samsung and Vivo.
In the festive sales period, the company sold 5.2 million smartphones — over 160 per cent growth from the festival sales days from last year.
We are now the No. 1 ‘Quality Smartphone Brand’ in India adjudged by CMR (CyberMediaResearch) with the lowest return rate and the highest customer satisfaction on reliability,” informed Madhav.
“Becoming the No.1 brand on Flipkart too is a testimony to the fact that we have made our mark in a small time-frame, becoming one of the most preferred mobile phone brands for its performance, design and quality,” asserted a beaming Madhav who has too much on his plate for 2020.
“I want to create an entire ecosystem of products around smartphones that Indians can embrace seamlessly. I am constantly thinking about how can I bring more connected devices into my users’ lives to deliver exceptional experiences for them,” Madhav told.
