China-based Transsion Holdings, the makers of iTel-branded phones, intends to take on India's smartphone market: Report

After strengthening its position in the Indian feature phone market, Chinese conglomerate **Transsion Holdings** is now looking at capturing a bigger pie of the competitive smartphone segment, the company’s newly-appointed India CEO has stressed. [caption id=“attachment_4305091” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representational image. Reuters.[/caption] In 2017, the company sold approximately 130 million devices and achieved revenue of around 20 billion Yuan (Rs 21,000 crore) globally. “After seeing tremendous growth for our brand itel in the Indian mobile handset market, we are now focused on creating a bigger space in the Indian smartphone market with a fresh line-up soon,” Arijeet Talapatra, CEO of Transsion India, told IANS on 4 May. The company is set to launch a series of Next-Gen smartphones aligned with the young consumers’ needs in the country. According to a CyberMedia Research (CMR) report, over the last one year, itel has emerged as the second largest player in the overall mobile phone market in India, capturing more than 9 percent market share for 2017. The brand registered an exponential growth of 217 percent (year-on-year). “We want to make itel a household name among Indian consumers,” said Talapatra. Transsion today has over 1,000 service touch points in India. “Since our inception in India, we’ve been on a mission to provide a superior smartphone experience to all our customers through unique service proposition for all our brands,” the CEO reiterated. As the new CEO, Talapatra will lead the development and execution of the company’s long-term strategy with a view to create shareholder value in alignment with the company’s identity. He will be responsible for leading the development and execution of long-term strategies, overall success of the organisation and making top-level managerial decisions. “India is Transsion’s second largest market after Africa. As per recent reports, we have already become the fifth largest mobile handset player in India,” Talapatra told IANS. Transsion Holdings recently launched its second exclusive “company-owned, company-operated (COCO)” service centre in India to provide customer services through its exclusive after-sales service brand called “Carlcare”. Transsion’s previous COCO store was inaugurated at Noida in September last year. “Owing to Carlcare’s capabilities and faster repair efficiencies, we have strengthened our service commitment to the Indian customers by launching our second exclusive centre in Mumbai,” Talapatra said. According to the IDC, Transsion Group made its debut in the top 5 in India with more than three-fold annual growth in shipments in Q1 2018. The China-based group has four brands under its umbrella — itel, Tecno, Infinix and Spice. In the first quarter of 2018, itel stood at third position with 13 percent market share in the global feature phone market, said a Counterpoint report.