Lava Mobiles eyes over 40% growth in customer base in 1 yr

Lava Mobiles, one of the newest entrants in the cellular space, is eyeing a customer base of around 10,000 customers in one year’s time, up from 7,000 customers right now.

Praveen Srivastava, marketing head of Lava Mobiles, said, “We are looking at a 7 - 10 per cent market share. So far we have been concentrating on the rural market. Having established our position in the rural market we are now entering the urban markets as well.”

“We are also looking at introducing dual SIM handsets in Kolkata soon,” added Srivastava. According to the Indian Cellular Association (ICA), around 8.5 million handsets have been sold in Bengal this fiscal (2009-10), of which 5.9 million are in the sub-Rs 3,000 category.

Indian Cellular Association (ICA) president Pankaj Mohindroo feels multi-SIM handsets will continue to boom till number portability comes into play across all the telecom circles. “Once number portability is introduced, dual or multi SIM handset sales may drop because a lot of existing users of dual SIM use it for maintaining more than one phone number,” Mohindroo said.

“Around 10-12 million handsets are sold per month in India, of which dual SIM handsets would account for around 2 million,” Mohindroo added.