China’s OnePlus plans to expand its Indian store network as it attempts to grab the lead in a smartphone market. The company is now focusing on strengthening offline sales to penetrate deep into the hinterland. In last year, OnePlus retained its number one spot in premium smartphone market.
For OnePlus, the success has been mostly built through its online sales. Now, it is expanding its presence in the offline market in India.
Even with a large presence on the online, the growth of the brand has been neglected offline and also suffers due to limitations of accessibility. This brand has a great demand in markets like Bangalore where every third customer is buying a OnePlus and 2 out of 3 people buy it online. Other than 8 top cities, OnePlus hardly has any offline presence. The company is now going to break all these by entering offline store to grab the lead in a smartphone market.
Tasked to expand the brand and its offline presence, Vikas Agarwal, General Manager, OnePlus, India, said that the company is eyeing to set up 600+ stores in the coming months. Apart from this, they have expanded to USA and Europe this year.
Talking about product launches, Agarwal added, “While launching a product, you have to make sure the entire country is aware about it. You have to get the biggest channels available. We have even tapped properties like IPL and Asia Cup. When we do sales promotion for a short span, the print is a more suitable medium. For short-term action-based messaging, the print is the most suitable medium.”
While almost all smartphone brands rely heavily on celebrities to promote their phones, OnePlus has done extremely well for itself, with 30% market share. The company is globally active on every social media platform to keep its community engaged and intact, with a different strategy and objective for each.
OnePlus encourage #shotononeplus experiences and engage with users on Instagram, Twitter to boost the new announcements, YouTube to create and distribute visually appealing, engaging content and Facebook to have broad reach. ATL is used only during product launches.
