Lava is the fastest growing Indian smartphone brand: Counterpoint Research

NEW DELHI: A recent report by Counterpoint Research has revealed interesting insights on the preliminary sizing of the global handset and smartphone market. Based on the Q4 2015 (Oct-Dec 2015), performance of the handset manufacturer’s report, local brands especially from China and India showed promising growth in smartphone shipments. Lava International Limited with an expanding international footprint registered a growth of 214 per cent globally in 2015 over 2014, the highest growth globally for an Indian brand in smartphone category.

Among the 850 smartphone brands that competed in the global market in 2015, top 20 commanded almost 85% of the total volume. Further to this, the study reports that entry level and premium smartphone segment contributed to more than half of the total volume in 2015. Lava, with a wide portfolio of Android smartphones across multiple price segments has a very strong presence in the sub 10k price segment. Having registered more than 100% growth in FY 14-15 over FY 13-14, Lava International achieved revenues of USD 1.2 billion in FY14-15, becoming one of the leading players in the mobile handset industry.

The report explained that revenue from international business has grown more than 2000% in FY14-15 over FY13-14. Outside India, Lava has presence in Thailand, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Indonesia, Mexico, Middle East and Russia. Lava is the number one brand in Thailand and one of the leading brands in Nepal and Bangladesh. Besides Samsung, Apple & HTC, Lava is the only company in the world outside of China to have an end to end control on product design, development, testing and manufacturing.

Commenting on this analysis, Hari Om Rai, Chairman and Managing Director, Lava International Ltd said, “It is a proud moment for all of us to become the fastest growing Indian handset brand globally. This is a key milestone for us as we aspire to become a global consumer brand from India. At Lava we strive to create excellence in everything we do and believe in making valuable technologies accessible to the people across the world through quality innovative products. Globally we sold 28 million phones last FY, both feature and smartphones combined and will grow much faster this year. To fuel our growth plans we intend to strengthen our R&D capabilities further by investing Rs. 200cr and employing 2000 people in the next 5 years.”

Lava has expressed its plans to manufacture in India to cater to both domestic and international demand for its products. It plans to invest INR 26.15 billion in a phased manner to scale it up to have an annual production capacity of 216 million phones. The company set up its first manufacturing plant in Noida last year with a production capacity of 12 million phones annually. This will be ramped up to 30 million by March’17.