Anker is a global leader in charging technology and provides a wide range of world-class chargers including wireless chargers, car chargers, portable and wall chargers for a wide range of devices spanning mobile phones, tablets, and laptops. Anker is a US-based multinational consumer electronics company currently present in 100 countries. Anker has a wide range of products under 5 different brands and several diverse categories of mobile accessories and smart products. During a conversation with Mobility Magazine, Mr. Gopal Jeyaraj, Country Head & SAARC Anker Innovations, talks about their technology, marketing strategies, and future plans.
Q. Brief about your company and the targets for this year?
Anker Innovations is an expert in charging technologies and an innovator of smart devices for entertainment, travel, and smart homes. Anker believes in providing people with everything that is needed in order to be mobile. We met or even doubled our sales over the targets for 2020-21 in spite of the pandemic.
Q. How the pandemic impacted your company sales?
The mobile accessories market has been booming along with the smartphone industry since the start of the pandemic. Consumers are pairing their smartphones with the latest Bluetooth accessories like earphones, wireless earbuds, and speakers to enhance their experience. We at Anker have revamped and updated our offline channel strategy because the offline channel plays a crucial role in our growth. We maintained price-parity between the online and the offline so that online will have no negative effect on our offline channel. We will keep on introducing and launching more products to help the channel, excite our users and boost our sales.
Q. Shed some light on your latest launches!
Anker has announced a new Motion Plus 30W Bluetooth party speaker to our wide range of Audio products in India. Motion Plus is designed to be portable with 30W of sound, and it is well suited for outdoor with customized sound profile, 15-hour battery life and IPX7 rating. The product, priced at Rs. 6999, comes with 18-month warranty and is available on Flipkart along with the leading retail stores in India. Motion Plus is loaded with two 40 kHz ultra-high frequency tweeters, neodymium woofers and oversized passive radiators to fill every corner of the room with 30 W of LOUD rich sound and wide frequency range that stretches from 50 Hz to 40 kHz. To ensure the front row experience, Motion Plus dual tweeters, woofers and passive radiators have been installed at a 15 degree angle for maximum quality coverage. Using Anker’s proprietary battery technology, Motion Plus comes with built in 6700 mAh battery that keeps the music playing for 12 non-stop hours. The device can also be controlled via the Soundcore app (available on both Android and iOS) that offers multiple pre-set modes & a fully customizable EQ experience.
Q. What are your strategies to motivate your partners?
Our Channel Partner Program is designed to motivate and engage channel partners to create more value for customers. Anker is highly offline-focused and values the relationship with the channel partners. With various schemes and better margins, we aim to reward their commitment and contribution and reaching our brands and products to the end-users during these trying times.
Q. Which of your products have given traction to sales?
Overall, our audio products in TWS category have gained the maximum traction over the years and this is the one category that has been growing fast.
Q. What has been your success mantra over the years?
Channel partners are the main reason for our success. Our wide range of products, across categories like premium wireless headphones, TWS Speakers and Earphones, and an ever-growing number of compatible smart home products, is our other strength. Also, we have a robust R&D, which helps to give in best to our valued customers.
Q. What is your take on the worldwide shortage of components – consumer and mobile accessory brands?
Recently, there has been a delay in the supply of products due to the shortage of components both in the mobile accessory segments, but soon it should be over.
Q. What are your future plans in terms of marketing tie-ups, new technological innovations, etc?
Anker Innovations is an umbrella brand that houses Anker, Eufy, Zolo, among others. Anker is a global leader in charging technology and is America’s leading charging brand; Eufy specialises in creating connected devices and applications for smart household solutions, and Zolo reinvents traditional audio devices with AI-embedded products that are made to facilitate smart homes. We further plan to increase channel base, expand to Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, and parallelly launch new categories in India.