Rajesh Mahajan, as one of those who started young, he already has over 20 years of experience in telecom Industry under his belt. After having over 5 yrs of experience in electronic gaming industry, Telecom Paging distribution in 1993 was the beginning for him in the distribution space with companies like Easy Call, RPG Paging, Page Link and Motorola Pager’s.
His first move to the telecom industry was with Essar (now known as vodaphone) in 1996. The next switch was in the Handset Retail & Distribution Business in year 2000 by founding P.P Telecell wherein he worked with leading brands such as Ericsson, Sony, Sony Ericsson, HP Mobiles, O2 and Virgin Mobile in CDMA for nearly 8 years till 2008, followed by launching his own brand of mobile phone “Rage Mobile Phones” from year 2008-2012. Presently PP Telecell is working in association with UT Electronics promoting Gionee Mobiles in part of North India. PP Telecell believes that they will establish Gionee among the top 3 brands in there region.
Rajesh Shares, In the beginning Gionee was considered as another Chinese brand, but with Gionee offering world class products at affordable prices. In last one year the feedback we have received on consumer experience and quality is now well established among the consumer and trade alike.
Nowadays, many new entrants are making their entry into the cell phone market through exclusive online launches on sites such as Flipkart, Snapdeal, Amazon, etc. Many people see them as a great threat particularly those distributors and retailer who are on the traditional channel. In this regard, Rajesh clarifies, “We are not threatened by online launches. Many new entrants from China come up with fantastic promises at the beginning, but time will tell that most of those promises are on the papers only and they become stale in the long run. The customers in India believe in hands on experience and personized aftercare which online could never offer. But changing trend of buying will attract a limited segment of the customers which are not more then 6 % today and looking at trend in other parts of the world this will grow upto 15% max. the remaining 85% will remain with the traditional channel.
Online retailers can never completely swallow the traditional channel. Traditional channel will continue to have the dominant share. A buyer is more likely to trust a traditional seller than an online seller when he thinks about service. When the online sellers downgrade the price, the customer loses confidence in both the brand and the traditional channel so it is essential that price parity is maintained between the online and traditional channels. When online retailers sell at low prices, brands also suffer. This practice has hurt the sentiment of traditional channel already.
Regarding online retailing for Gionee , Rajesh further Clarifies, we being regional sales partners of Gionee , are not selling our products to any of the online sellers. Thanks to Mr. Arvind Vohra (Head Of Gionee India) for his vision to support the traditional channel.
Regarding promotion, Rajesh further details, In the last 2 quarters Gionee has done 2 big successful campaign across the media which has been appreciated by consumer as well as trade. the result is clear with us as in the last 3 months, ELife S5.5 has been our No 1 selling model (among Gionee’s models) in Delhi. Going forward in the festival season the customer will see Gionee as the most visible and promising brand across media.
“For a good brand to be successful, product should be good and service should be good followed by availability”. That is what we at PP Telecell have been working since day one. The demand for our products has been increasing exponentially.“In and around Delhi and Haryana we know about 8000 retailers. Our target is to reach all of them by end of this year.
About Service, With our own L3 in place in Delhi now we along with Gionee are targeting a 100% turnaround time of 72 hrs for after sales service, which we have been able to achieve 87 % so far. In Service we are focusing on customer delight.
Rajesh Mahajan concludes, “Now we are regional partners only for Gionee. We have confidence in ourselves and as well as in Gionee as a brand. Gionee is one brand that delivers what it promises. During the past 15 yrs many big brands appeared in the Indian market, but they could not sustain their shares, not because they do not have good products, but because they did not understand the Indian market well. As per a local adage, the winner of a chariot race is the one who can harmoniously control all the pulling horses together. Same is the case in the smartphone market with many big players competing with each others. The successful players are those who can recognize the trends and the factors that will influence the buying decisions of the consumers and make a coordinated effort to deal with several intervening factors. The providers of Gionee are brilliant people and they come up with good products. We give them feedback about the India customers, their needs and preferences.”