Post its India launch in 2014, Chinese smartphone brand Vivo has succeeded in making its presence felt in the Indian market and in the minds of consumers, thanks to its association with IPL. Vivek Zhang, Chief Marketing Officer, Vivo India talks about the brand’s journey so far and future plans in India
By SAMARPITA BANERJEE
Q] Vivo entered India in December 2014. How has the ride been so far?
In two years, Vivo has established itself as a premium brand. We have expanded to 15,000 employees and have a network of over 10,000 retailers in 300 cities spread across 22 States. We are the first smartphone company to set up its own manufacturing unit in India in line with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Make in India’ campaign. The unit set up in Greater Noida last year is fully operational. We have major business announcements planned in the coming months, which will reinforce our leading position in the market.
Q] As the Indian market is cluttered with a lot of smartphone brands, both local and international, including other Chinese brands, how do you differentiate your products from the rest?
Vivo believes in enhancing customer satisfaction by providing them premium product value, which is embedded in features like incomparable sound experience. All smartphones manufactured by Vivo offer a phenomenal audio experience with powerful, crystal-clear audio and a completely immersive feel. Vivo’s high fidelity sound quality is created by a professional hi-fi chip and the dual chip audio decoding programme gives a great experience. Our new flagship products Vivo V3 and Vivo V3 Max are the first ever smartphones equipped with fastest fingerprint sensor technology which unlocks the device in 0.2 seconds.
Q] As a new entrant, you tied up with the Indian Premier League (IPL). How did that help the brand?
As a young brand, it is imperative to create a bond with existing and potential customers. That was the idea behind the IPL title sponsorship. The association proved extremely fruitful. Being the title sponsor helped us gain a huge brand recall across the country and connect with the youth. As per a recent report by research agency Ipsos, Vivo was the highest recalled brand during the IPL season. IPL also helped us garner more customer engagement through various activities like the Vivo-IPL trophy tour, Vivo-IPL Fan Parks, Vivo PowerPlay, an online game to predict the IPL match scores and events, etc. We also created specially designed Vivo hi-fi boxes to promote the brand during IPL matches. This year, Vivo IPL witnessed massive overall viewership of 335 million. We also received excellent response from our TVC campaign launched during the IPL season with our brand ambassador Ranveer Singh. All these catapulted the brand recall of Vivo to an all-time high in India, resulting in increased interest in and sales of our products.
Q] How has the association with Ranveer Singh worked for you?
Ranveer has a huge fan following amongst young Indians and Vivo is a brand for the Indian youth. This lethal combination has successfully created magic in the Indian market. With constant support from Ranveer and our colleagues, Vivo has successfully made its mark during the IPL season and our market-share has substantially increased.
Q] What were the challenges you faced while launching in India?
The biggest challenge for any brand when it embarks on a journey into a new market is to build a brand identity and recall. The job becomes all the more challenging when the market is as diverse as India. This is a market where you have to strike the right balance in aspects like distribution, price-features equation, enhance brand recall and identity while retaining the brand value. Right from the beginning, we have invested a great deal in consumer insights to ensure that we offer impeccable experience through ingenious technology. Our legacy, along with our market understanding, has made our presence felt in the Indian smartphone market. We are hopeful that unbeatable product quality and robust business model will be our differentiating factor.
Q] When it comes to retail, what is your strategy?
Vivo currently sells phones only through retail stores as we wish to connect with our consumers better by providing them the actual look and feel of the product before making their purchase decision. The focus remains highly on Tier II and Tier III cities while consolidating our presence in the developed markets. We are investing in strong retail network across these cities to ensure hassle free service for our customers and plan to open more exclusive service centres.
Q] What are some of the consumer trends that you have observed in India?
Firstly, growing purchasing power and rising influence of social media has enabled Indian consumers to splurge on better products and services. Secondly, with the market becoming increasingly cluttered (as over 100 smartphone brands are operating in the market), consumers are looking for exclusive features in a phone at an affordable price. Hence, the competition is fierce and the customer can only benefit from it. Lastly and most significantly, India has a tremendous growth potential simply because out of 60% of the user base that is still on feature phones, 70-80 million users are expected to switch to smartphones.
Q] How different is the Indian market from the Chinese market?
India is presently the second largest smartphone market in the world and is witnessing a surge in the sector like never before. Being on the cusp of digitization and mobility, the Indian market allows a lot of experimentation in terms of innovation and product offerings. We witnessed similar trends in China and the market has mushroomed since then.
Q] What would be your marketing strategy for the next few years?
The Indian market is very dynamic and one has to be flexible to adapt to it. We have the association with IPL for two years and look forward to the second edition in 2017. At the same time, we will continue to look for more offline associations with different platforms across genres as our target audience is diverse. We are also continuously working on product innovation and plan to come up with new exciting products in this calendar year as well.
Q] What does your media mix look like?
We have a healthy mix of ATL and BTL marketing campaigns this year. We are reaching out to Indian consumers through mediums like conventional Print and TV advertising to below-the-line activities at retail stores. We are also present actively on social media platforms and looking to expand our reach and activities on different platforms.
Q] Where do you see future growth coming from in India?
Since our entry in India in December 2014, Vivo has grown remarkably. In the last quarter, Vivo’s smartphone shipment has grown by 759%. Our current market-share is 3% and we expect it to grow substantially in the near future.
Only one-fourth of a billion people in India have smartphones out of 1.2 billion people. So, the budget segment is not only intact, but alive and kicking as well. We expect the penetration of 4G LTE into the market as 40% of smartphones being shipped into India are already on 4G. We can have over 9 crore 4G subscribers and 18 crore 4G smartphones by 2018. And we are one of the first brands to introduce VoLTE in our smartphones. Vivo V3 Max now supports the latest technology. A major chunk of mobile phone users in Tier II and Tier III areas use feature phones. As brands continue to offer more exclusive features at an affordable price, more people are expected to switch to feature phones. Therefore, we perceive these Tier II and Tier II markets as areas with enormous growth potential.
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