Accord Comm aims at Rs 800 crore from mobile business

Accord Communications Limited, a Meerut-based company engaged in designing, manufacturing and marketing of telecom products, is aiming at achieving revenues of Rs 800 crore from its multi-SIM mobile handsets business in the current financial year.

“The Indian mobile handset market sees 15 million new additions every month and is growing rapidly, which makes it a big opportunity for new but serious players like Accord to enter," PK Mohta, director of Accord Communications told Business Standard.

Accord, which entered the Indian mobile handset market in December 2009, had so far sold 35,000 units in Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana and northeast states.

The company is looking at adding 20 mid, low-range and high-end handsets to its current basket of nine, including GSM+GSM+CDMA and 3G-enabled phones within the three months, with the prices ranging from Rs 1,300 to Rs 10,000.

Accord, Mohta said, will have a pan-India presence with special emphasis on Tier-II and Tier-III cities in a month. “Our total investment plan for the mobile handset business in the current financial year is about Rs 90 crore, with the debt component being 30 per cent and the rest through internal accruals,” he said, adding the company is targeting to sell close to 300,000 units a month starting this year.

Announcing the company’s foray into the Andhra Pradesh market on Friday, Mohta said Accord hoped to sell 50,000 units per month going by the changing mobile market dynamics here. The company plans to enter the Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala markets early next month.

“At present, the four southern states levy 4-5 per cent value-added tax (VAT) on mobile phones, while it is between 12 per cent and 14 per cent in the rest of the country, which we want to piggyback on. South India is expected to account for about 40 per cent of our FY11 sales,” he added.

Mohta said Accord was currently sourcing its models from China, and was looking at taking up its own manufacturing from its Haridwar plant by 2011. The company at present has two production lines to manufacture mobile chargers and batteries at Haridwar.

“We intend to add two more lines with an investment of Rs 30 crore to start with,” he said, adding the company was planning to launch 30 franchisee-run exclusive retail outlets by the end of this year and scale this up to 120 in FY11. “We will be selling IT products like low-end laptops and chargers, to make our retail business more viable.”