Oppo eyes 50% contribution to overall revenue from online sales in 2021

Smartphone maker Oppo expects online sales to contribute about 50 per cent to overall business of the company in this year with its reach expanding to smaller towns as well through e-retailers, a senior company official said on Monday.

Oppo India Chief Marketing Officer Damyant Singh Khanoria told PTI that as part of its omnichannel strategy the company is looking to focus on its online presence.

"Our intent and ambition from the e-commerce platform is to really drive about 50 per cent of overall business through ecommerce. It's Flipkart and we are also ramping up our own presence in e-commerce," Khanoria said when asked about the business outlook of the company for the year.

Oppo has been primarily focussing on retail channel partners but now it will enhance partnership with ecommerce companies.

According to the market research firm IDC, Oppo's business increased around 35 per cent in the first quarter of 2021 with the company clocking 12.2 per cent market share in the smartphone segment in India.

"Our omnichannel strategy has not kind of embraced e-commerce as aggressively as we are doing now. We have been able to build a kind of momentum with the Reno5 launch. This launch had very deep collaboration with Flipkart which we have not done in the past. What we are doing with Flipkart is a partnership that allows us to penetrate very deeply in tier 3 and tier 4 markets," Khanoria said.

He said that Reno6 smartphones recorded 178 per cent jump in growth on the first day of the sale, compared to the response that company recorded for Reno5 smartphones.

"When we talk about the mood of the market and consumers, we are experiencing tremendous growth and it augurs well for us as we go into the Diwali season," Khanoria said.

The company unveiled Reno6 Pro 5G with 12 GB RAM and 256 GB internal memory priced at Rs 39,990, and Reno6 5G with 8GB RAM and 128 GB internal memory priced at Rs 29,990 on July 14.

Oppo sells Reno6 Pro 5G on Flipkart and across all mainline retailers, while Reno6 5G was available exclusively through Flipkart from July 20.

He said that after the second wave of the pandemic, recovery in metro and tier 1 cities has been quicker.

"We in India have a fast growing market. We have seen this in metro, tier 1. But when growth is 178 per cent then it is also coming from tier 2 and tier 3 towns," Khanoria said.

He said that there is a big shift in the way consumers will buy 5G devices.

"We have got a very clear road map as to how 5G is going to emerge in India. We have made very significant investment to make 5G devices in India. To manufacture 5G devices we have invested over Rs 2,200 crore in our manufacturing facility in Greater Noida. We similarly committed over Rs 3,500 crore in the manufacturing cluster as part of the 'make in India' initiative," Khanoria said.

He said that the company is leading research and development on 6G technology and deeply investing in working out a road map for bringing the technology to consumers.