Yaantra plans to expand its operations to over 800 cities in 3 years

Yaantra, which provides repair services and refurbished smartphones, said Sunday it plans to expand its operations to over 800 cities and towns in the country, engaging over 40,000 retailers over the next three years.

Yaantra will also set up a network of company-owned and franchisee-run repair centres in 220-250 towns and cities during the same time period, Yaantra said in a statement.

"India has seen the highest year-on-year growth at 41 per cent in the refurbished category of the smartphones. The refurbished smartphones market is set to grow by 27 per cent in the coming years, where the market size for repair is USD 2 billion and for the refurbished segment is USD 4 billion (expected to reach USD 10 billion by FY2022)," it added.

Its business has seen a year-on-year growth of over 250 per cent in five years and expects to close the ongoing fiscal at around Rs 200 crore in revenue, Yaantra said.

"The expansion is just an extension of our commitment to the 400 million people who are still on feature phones. We are geared up to fulfill their aspirations of having a branded smartphone at an affordable price," Yaantra co-founder and CEO Jayant Jha said.

With this expansion spree, Yaantra targets a 5X projected growth and will also generate employment for 3,000-3,500 skilled professionals across the company's repair, refurbish and service segment in these three years, he added.

Jha said priority for the company will be on improving the company's tech infrastructure with greater capacity, setting-up new repair centres and strengthening the logistics division.

"Expansion in existing territories, foraying in new market regions and getting more retail and channel partners aboard is going to be our next foot forward. Yaantra has been prominently working towards the re-commerce of smartphones and recently, we got into wearables. We will continue to extend our portfolio by adding new products," he said.

Currently, Yaantra employs over 1,000 people across their offices in ten cities covering over 14,000 pin codes. It had already sold more than 7 lakh smartphones till now and receives over 1,500 fresh orders daily.