Movil Mobile eyes Rs 400 cr

Movil Mobile, part of the Delhi-based product design company Bling Telecom, is looking at an average revenue of Rs 400 crore this calendar year, said its chairman Rajiv Khanna.

The company, which entered the already-crowded domestic handset market in December 2009, offers high-end, EVDO (evolution-data optimised), 3G and full-touch phones under Movil (mobile phone in Spanish) and mass-market models under the Bling brand, both on GSM and CDMA platforms.

“We are looking at Andhra Pradesh in a very focused manner and will be launching our two brands – which will not be interfering and noncompetitive – shortly, and expect to garner Rs 65 crore revenues from the state this calendar,” Khanna told Business Standard.

Movil will also expand its coverage from the current 25 towns in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala to 200 towns, and is aiming at achieving five per cent market share in south India across segments during this year.

Khanna said the company would be adding 17 new products to the existing basket of 9 models, which will include EVDO, 3G and half-qwerty phone (a hybrid of qwerty and normal phone), and a qwerty phone with answering machine for the first time in India with applications and content like push mail, free astrology services that come in with both subscription-based and short-code options.

“We are currently working with a US-based company for noise-reduction technology and a Chinese firm for a couple of applications. The new products will be launched by the first half of June and will be priced between Rs 2,000 and Rs 7,999,” he said.

Stating that the company was targeting youth in the age group of 16 to 24 years, especially down south courtesy the BPO revolution, he said new entrants into the Indian market were actually opening the bandwidth for other players and would be consolidating their shares in the 15-million-unit-a-month market with a share of between 25 per cent and 40 per cent.

“So far, we have sold around 150,000 units. With the test marketing being done, we are going to ramp this up to 100,000 phones a month,” Khanna said, adding the company had 3,000 points of sale across the country and would increase this to 15,000 besides having 3,000 of its own ISPs (in-shop promoters) this year.