LeEco Taking India By Storm

Their products may be cheap, but the company isn’t.

India’s love for inexpensive phones is no secret. In fact, its the very reason why manufacturers large and small are making a beeline for our shores.

Chinese company LeEco (previously named as LeTV) recently bounded into the Indian market with a rather sudden and loud launch — much with very aggressive and in-your-face full page ads that hit every national newspaper in the land, day after day.

And boy, did it pay off!

But first, let’s introduce you to their product line — the Brand came to India with two smartphones: Le 1s and Le Max.

Priced at INR 10,999, the Le 1s is a budget phone that has all you can ask for — a 5.5 inch Full HD screen, runs on a decent MediaTek Helio X10 processor, 3 GB RAM, 32 GB storage and is powered by a 3,000 mAh battery.
In terms of eyes, the phones sports a 13 megapixel rear camera with an LED flash, and a 5 megapixel front camera. The phone also features dual SIM slots, fingerprint scanner and supports 4G.

Alas, it can’t do the dishes.

Big brother, the Le Max is priced at INR 32,999. This is a premium phone with a 6.33 inch Quad-HD display, is powered by a Snapdragon 810 processor, has 4 GB RAM, 64 GB storage and is powered by a 3,400 mAh battery with a fingerprint scanner on the rear of the phone.
Cameras you ask? 21 megapixel rear camera and 4 Ultrapixel front camera. Continuing the family tradition, the Le Max also has dual SIM slots and supports 4G.

Wouldn’t you say, both of these seem formidable products? India seems to think so.

In yet another online-sales-only campaign (a la Xiaomi), via India’s poster boy online platform Flipkart, LeEco smashed records all over again. They’ve so far held three flash sales for the Le smartphones within the last month, with another one planed for this week.
It is said that over 20 lakh (i.e. 2 million) registrations have been made for LeEco’s phones via just these three sales!

If that’s not making your head spin, try this — according to stats reported by The Indian Express, over 2.2 lakh registrations for the phone were made within 31 seconds of a sale’s opening bell!

But LeEco’s not resting on its laurels, nor has it hopped over the bank just yet. It’s got it’s strategy right and is obviously playing to a plan. Instead of being just a flash in the pan (pun not intended), LeEco’s announced that it will be opening over 550 customer service centres spread across 300 towns within the next 12 months.

They’ve obviously been reading the sordid tales of woe regarding other ‘economy’ brands (Indian and Chinese alike), and how their customers feel cheated by handsets being faulty soon after inauguration day. Our information yields that almost all these ‘economy’ brands have over 30% handsets being reported as faulty within the first 30 days! Then the mad hunt for service centres and the more maddening experience of poor service…

This announcement and investment from LeEco is perhaps their way of proving that they’re different, and not ‘cheap’.

We certainly hope so.

Like we said earlier, India’s already fallen for LeEco. It is unbelievable that the once online-shy Indian populace has lapped up a hitherto completely unknown brand’s products with such alacrity and confidence. We’re still trying to wrap our heads around that one…

LeEco’s got a whole strategy lined up for India.

They plan to change the Indian market, and confirm that they have a lot more to offer than just low prices. First up, the company plans to pursue very high targets in India, and pursue them very aggressively.
Atul Jain, the COO of the LeEco India said in an interview with The Indian Express — “I would expect to be in the top three by then [end of 2016]”.

To support their growth and to get closer to customers and to support their needs the company has already started working on physical stores and service centres.

To round up the strategy, the company plans to bring to the Indian market, its other key products — content, cloud and platform.

All of these strategies tie in well towards a long term relationship with it’s customers.

The Chinese smartphone company clearly plans to capture a lion’s share in India, and given how it has already taken the Indian market by storm in less than 30 days, they seem to be already creating a dent in the Universe.

It would be interesting to watch their story unfold in the world’s second biggest smartphones market.

Originally published at Chip-Monks.