Yu Yunicorn to be sold through offline channels as well

After almost a year of selling online, Micromax subsidiary Yu Televentures is now expanding its presence in the offline market and expects 50% of its sales to come from the brick-and-mortar channel this year.In November last year, Yu had started selling its handsets offline in partnership with Reliance Retail. “We did a small trial with them (Reliance) and we received an overwhelming response. The online route has done well for us. But there is a huge market opportunity in the offline space and that is growing. That is why, we want to expand our presence in the offline market as well,” Yu Televentures founder Rahul Sharma told PTI. He added that the company expects to be present across 50,000 points by the end of the year. Yu’s rivals, Xiaomi and Motorola , which had launched operations in India through the online route, have expanded their presence in the offline space to cater to the huge demand in the Indian market. India is one of the fastest growing smartphone markets globally. Yu just launched its new handset – Yunicorn – priced at Rs 12,999. The device will be sold through Flipkart exclusively for a month and then through other channels. Sharma said the company will not leverage its parent, Micromax’s distribution network. “We are doing this on our own and are appointing distributors… In a year’s time, we expect online-offline sales ratio to be 50:50,” he said. The company, which previously had 5 devices in its portfolio, sold over 2 million units. Sharma declined to comment on sales targets for this year. Yunicorn features 5.5 inch-display, MediaTek Helio P10 1.8 Ghz octacore processor, 4GB RAM, 32 GB memory (expandable upto 128 GB), 13MP rear and 5MP front camera and 4,000 mAh battery. Yu still sticks to modded version of Cyanogen called Android on Steroid  or AOS. Apart from cutting down and making the OS more stock, there is nothing new here apart from an updated version of Around YU. Updated to version 2.0 Around Yu gets new features and improvements to existing ones. Medical section is a new entry that will let users consult a doctor straight from the Around YU app using video calls. The consultations are not free of cost. Version 2.0 also brings a new e-wallet feature that lets you pay for various services straight from within the app. With inputs from PTI