HTC India Plans Expansion in Outlet Presence

By Zia Askari

With the rapid expansion in the number of customers going in for smartphones, HTC India is embarking on a plan to increase its presence in the number of outlets within India.

As of now the company has a strong presence in over 5000 outlets and as per its plans it is set to increase this number to around 8000 outlets within the next three months time.

“The smartphone space is moving really fast and we need to cater to the growing demands of the customers. We are planning to expand our current number of outlets from 5000 to around 8000 within the next three months. This will give us unprecedented reach to touch upon more number of customers in India,” explained, Faisal Siddiqui, Country Head, HTC.

Balancing Act of Online and Traditional Retail

At a time when there are a number of brands, which are going in for exclusive partnerships with online retail players, HTC is balancing the act. While, the company does partner with online websites to push its handsets in India, it is keeping its core focus towards traditional way of reaching out with the help of multi brand retail stores, Large Format Retailers and its own stores.

“We firmly believe in our telecom channel partners. If we look at the handset sales in India, the contribution of online sales is only 5 per cent, and this is going to continue for many years to come. And hence, while partnering with online retail players we make sure that there is no price parity and so there is a right balance between our online and channel sales,” he explained.

As far as the company’s distribution is concerned, it is working closely with its set of four distributors in the form of Ingram Micro for LFRs, MPS for North and West India, Link Telecom for East India and Bangalore based UTL for South India.