Karbonn eyes Rs 8,000 cr revenue in FY15

Company to invest Rs 300 cr

Homegrown handset maker Karbonn aims to clock a revenue of Rs 8,000 crore in 2014-15, growing close to 80%, as it expands its smart-phone portfolio.

Karbonn, which is the country's third largest smart-phone maker, expects to close the current fiscal with Rs 4,500 crore in revenues.

"About 80% of our handsets sold are feature phones and the remaining are smart-phones. We expect the ratio to change to 50-50 in the next fiscal," Karbonn Managing Director Pardeep Jain told PTI.

Smart-phones account for 40% of Karbonn's revenues and that is expected to grow to 65%, he said.

Also, Karbonn plans to spend Rs 300 crore on marketing and sales and about Rs 400 crore on R&D during the next fiscal, Jain said, adding that the spend will focus on smart-phones.

The company today launched three new smart-phones, based on the latest Android KitKat operating system and hexa and octa-core processors, in partnership with mobile chipmaker MediaTek.

The three phones -- Titanium Hexa, Titanium Octane and Titanium Octane Plus -- are priced at Rs 16,990, Rs 14,490 and Rs 17,990, respectively. The devices will start shipping from the last week of April.

"We are the first Indian brand to offer KitKat OS to the Indian consumers. The smart-phone market in India grew by nearly 229% in 2013 and the partnership with MediaTek will allow us to further consolidate our position in the domestic market," he said.

According to research firm IDC, smart-phone sales surpassed 44 million units in 2013, up from 16.2 million in 2012.

This surge has been mainly powered by home grown vendors which have shown a tremendous and consistent growth over the past four quarters of 2013.

Samsung led the Indian smart-phone market (37%), followed by Micromax (16%), Karbonn (10%) and Sony (5%) in the October-December 2013 period.

The overall phone market in India stood at close to 257 million units in 2013, an 18% increase from 218 million units in 2012, with a remarkable migration from feature phones to smart-phones primarily due to the narrowing price gaps between the two product categories.