Flipkart to launch its own smartphone brand Billion Capture+ today

A lot of market intelligence that was acquired over a period of time by India's leading e-commerce company Flipkart is being put to test as the company's own smartphone product is going on sale under Billion Catpure+ brand in Rs 10,000 price bracket from November 15, 2017.

Hyderabad-based homegrown technology OEM Smartron has worked on Flipkart's maiden smartphone product in terms of design and development besides getting it manufactured for the e-commerce company.

"Flipkart has a very good market intelligence. They have shared many important inputs in finalising the specifications and prototyping of the product besides the price point. We also brought in our own expertise into the design, engineering and specs of the product. We expect a good response from the phone," Smartron chairman Mahesh Lingareddy told Business Standard on Tuesday.

The partnership with Flipkart comes as a big breakthrough for Smartron as it has been looking for opportunities to build hardware devices for third party brands that work on its own software ecosystem called tronX. It is an AI-powered IoT platform that combines a range of services and applications, including IoT and cloud, according to the company.

Mahesh Lingareddy says their partnership with Flipkart will extend to other future devices of the e-commerce company as well. Between its own products such as t-phone and t-book and the third party brands, Smartron will be building a range of devices, including smartphones and wearables at 4-5 price points in the next 12 months, according to him.

Mahesh thinks that launching a new phone model every six months was an aberration introduced by the Chinese companies. "We have built a quality product based on a good software platform. A quality product like this would last 18 months, "he said. His company is also working with other companies for a range of hardware devices that will carry 'Powered by tronX' label, according to him.