Power banks are now an integral part of the electronic gadgets nowadays. The power bank market is projected to grow from USD 9.0 billion in 2020 to USD 13.4 billion by 2025; it is expected to grow at a CAGR of 8.1% from 2020 to 2025.
Various factors like increasing internet-related services through smartphones and tablets, the decline in the price of power banks, frequent electric outages in certain countries, increase in power consumption of smartphones, and sudden shift to work-from-home and remote learning due to COVID-19 resulted in spike in demand for laptops are among the factors driving the market for power banks.
Mobility magazine speaks to some of the top power bank manufactures in India and takes their opinions and outlook on the latest technological trends, the market share, the challenges and the opportunities in the power bank segment.
How big is the market for power banks in India?
Mr. Akhilesh Chopra, Marketing Director, Bluei, “There is still a lot of scope for power banks, as people are travelling a lot and most users are in the process of migrating from the normal phones to smart phones. Even among the poorer sections are now switching over from features phones to smartphones.”
As per Mr Arnav Mutneja, Founder & Director, ZinQ Technologies,“The power bank market in India is about 20-25 lac units a month, which a huge.”
Techsci Research says that the power bank market is projected to grow to USD 255 million by 2023. Especially, the power banks with higher battery capacity are expected to dominate the market in the coming years. The main factor that is driving the power bank in the Indian market is the increasing demand for smartphones and large-scale digitization.”
Mr. Ashok Rajpal, CEO & MD – Ambrane India, “The power bank market has historically been pushed by the rise in the demand by mobile consumer gadges with heavy features and usage. It is expected this trend will continue to drive the growth of the power bank market during the forecast period. The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a decline in the growth rate of power banks due to the supply chain issues. However the increasing internet-related services through smartphones and tablets, the decline is temporary and soon the demand would boom again.”
The PD (Power Delivery) technology and new technologies Set to Influence the Power Bank Market
Mr. Ashok Rajpal of Ambrane India, “The PD technology is capturing the market quite fast. Its features like Quick Charging lets you charge compatible devices 4x faster than standard charging. Whether phone or laptop, the PD technology detects the connected device to deliver the precise amount of power to charge that device as fast as possible. Soon we would see faster variants in the market giving up to 40 W output. This fast PD technology would charge not only smart devices but laptops and other mobile gadgets too.”
Mr Rajneesh Wadhawan, Marketing Manager, Glorious Electronics, “PD Technology is still in the nascent stage, but it’s picking up fast. The new technology would entail 3-wire, 4-wire technology.”
Mr. Akhilesh Chopra of Bluei, “PD technology is adaptive to deliver the required charges. The watt is inversely proportional to time. The usage of smartphones has increased and this has led to the need of charging stations and power banks. High speed cables, VOOC cables, etc that support PD chargers are now in demand. In the charging segment, 30-40% are made in India.”
Mr Arnav Mutneja Founder & Director, ZinQ Technologies, “PD is picking up fast with the even cheaper phones supporting PD. Other technologies like dash charge (OnePlus), Vooc (Oppo, Vivo, Realme), QC, etc are also picking up. But the market fragmented because of the too many proprietary technologies.”
Mr. Paresh Vij of U&I, “The PD technology enables a device to take less amount of time and provide superfast charging, so it has become a must-have technology in the power bank
segment. Post-2020, we believe most of the Power Banks support the PD feature. PD-enabled power banks are the need of today’s consumers but at the same time, the consumers also want slim designs as well that can fit into their pockets without any hassles. Therefore, to offer compact designs, the power bank manufacturers need to be creative and use advanced technologies without compromising on the charging quality.”
Mr. Hemang Budhdeo, Co-Founder & Director, Stuffcool, “The PD technology charges fast and vanilla power charging will vanish. The QC, PD, PPS will dominate the future charging trends. Moreover, we foresee the growing usage of power bank for laptops as the new trend.”
Wireless Charging Power Banks Set to Dominate the Market Soon
Mr. Hemang Budhdeo of Stuffcool, “We were the first brand to launch the wireless charger. Last year, we launched Stuffcool Type C 18W, 10000 mAh Li Polymer Power bank with Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0 (QC3.0) Certified Textured Housing (black). This 10000 mAh capacity power bank is enough to charge your iPhone Xs 2.6 times or your Google Pixel 3 phone over 2 times faster. It has USB C 18W PD input/output to help you charge your devices and power bank rapidly. It will charge your Google Pixel 3 using a USB C-C cable in 1 hour 40 minutes from 0-100%; can fully charge your iPhone Xs using a USB C – lightning cable in 1 hour 45 minutes and the power bank itself can be fully charged in less than 4 hours. The two quick charge 3.0 (QC 3.0) USB output ports allow you to charge all your Quick charge 3.0 compatible devices quickly. It is lightweight and slim and the textured plastic housing gives good grip to carry along with ease.”
Mr. Akhilesh Chopra of Bluei, “Wireless charging is the trend now. And we are focusing on mass usage so that we can give the quality and affordability.
Mr Rajneesh Wadhawan of Glorious Electronics, “4-wire and 3-wire are the new technologies in the power banks which are likely to rule the market.”
Mr. Paresh Vij of U&I, “The integration of wireless charging technology needs significant improvements in order to become mainstream, but we hope to see significant growth in the usage of wireless technology overtaking the existing methods of traditional charging methods.”
New Smartphones Hhigh-Capacity Inbuilt Batteries will Impact The Demand for Power Banks
Mr. Paresh Vij of U&I, “It’s true that nowadays smartphones are coming up with good battery capacity and most of them have a fast-charging feature (PD charging technology) as well. However, today users are spending more time on their Smartphones, signifying the high usage of the battery consumption, reducing the life and durability of the mobile phone battery gradually. Therefore, the need for the power bank will remain constant and this will not impact the demand for Power Banks in the future as well.”
Mr. Hemang Budhdeo of Stuffcool, “We make power banks for most of the smartphone models including Apple, Nokia, Realme, etc. We also make power banks for laptops of Google, Samsung, Apple, etc models.”
Mr. Akhilesh Chopra, Marketing Director, Bluei, “Now, the trend is that people are opting for mobiles with high battery capacity As a result, the power bank market will be impacted in a huge way.”
Mr Rajneesh Wadhawan of Glorious Electronics, “Battery backup is of prime importance nowadays as the usage has accelerated due to the increase of social media, gaming, videos, etc. The low capacity power banks have become obsolete; now the requirement is power banks with min 10,000 mAh capacity.”
Mr. Ashok Rajpal of Ambrane India, “Once the pandemic subsides, there will be a surge in travelling by people and powerbanks would be definitely in great demand because during long journeys, there is no other alternate than carrying a good power bank. For mobile gamers and those addicted to OTT channels (like Netflix, Prime, etc), the power bank is a boon.”
Mr Arnav Mutneja Founder & Director, ZinQ Technologies, “The high capacity batteries are dependent on how fast we progress in terms of new technologies being incorporated in the device versus how fast energy density of batteries improves. It is unclear which will go faster and the fate of power banks will depend on this.”
What are your USPs regarding your power banks and how do you position yourself in the market?
Mr Rajneesh Wadhawan of Glorious Electronics, “We have the latest MCPD wireless 3 wire and 4 wire power banks.. we have almost 15- 25 types of power banks and we foresee that the demand has escalated from 5000 mAh to 10000 mAh requirement.”
Mr Arnav Mutneja Founder & Director of ZinQ Technologies, “We are looking at targeted reserve power sources for devices other than power banks like wearables and hearables. This will be our strategy going forward.”
Mr. Paresh Vij of U&i, “Our power banks are known to be value for money products, which comes with a combination of style and utility for our valued customers. We have been expanding our power bank range and we’ll be looking forward to bringing in superior and innovative products in the coming days too.”
Mr. Hemang Budhdeo of Stuffcool, “Stuffcool is differentially high power, QCPD power banks , Our power banks are QI certified wireless , But what is coming up is the power banks for laptops and we are designing power banks for laptops. “
Mr. Ashok Rajpal of Ambrane India, ‘At Ambrane, we have always been keenly working on the comfort and full featured products offered to our customers. Our USPs include quick and fast charging functionality, universal charging solution, wide variety of charging solution from 5K to 27K mAh giving 22.5W output, multi layers of safety. Moreover, our power banks are light weight and sleek design and of course Made in India. We strive to positionon bright growth aspects as we are one of the leading home-grown brands and are front runner in Power banks. Our power banks are quality and value for money, backed up with manufacturing unit in India.”
Mr. Akhilesh Chopra of Bluei, “We make very high class PCPA, built quality, and customized features.Then we have Type C charger, double input and double output ports, PD charging ports. Our power banks are trendy in style, and we offer massive variety about 20 power bank models. We cater to high-quality and long-lasting power bank with high reliability and a failure rate less than 1%. Bluei power banks provide the output that is promised in specs where most other power banks available in the market don’t provide what they promise, and their performance also drops rapidly with time “
Mr. Ashok Rajpal of Ambrane India, “Once the pandemic subsides, there will be a surge in travelling by people and powerbanks would be definitely in great demand because during long journeys, there is no other alternate than carrying a good power bank. For mobile gamers and those addicted to OTT channels (like Netflix, Prime, etc), the power bank is a boon.”
Mr Arnav Mutneja Founder & Director, ZinQ Technologies, “The high capacity batteries are dependent on how fast we progress in terms of new technologies being incorporated in the device versus how fast energy density of batteries improves. It is unclear which will go faster and the fate of power banks will depend on this.”
What are your USPs regarding your power banks and how do you position yourself in the market?
Mr. Rajneesh Wadhawan of Glorious Electronics, “We have the latest MCPD wireless 3 wire and 4 wire power banks.. we have almost 15-25 types of power banks and we foresee that the demand has escalated from 5000 mAh to 10000 mAh requirement.”
