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Subiksha eyes mobile phone market
By siliconindia
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Thursday, 26 July 2007, 19:30 IST
Chennai: Discount retail chain Subhiksha, one of the largest retailers in the country with 780 stores across nine States, is eyeing the mobile phones market. The company aims to be the largest national retail chain for cell phones, reported Business Line.
Subiksha had started the mobile division as an experimental basis in Delhi last July but today it has scaled up to 145 exclusive Subhiksha Mobile stores in the capital and other states such as Punjab, Gujarat, Mumbai and Chennai. It has opened 15 such stores in Chennai and intends to take it up to 30 by year-end and to around 400 stores across the country by March next.
According to R. Subramaniam, MD, Subhiksha Retail, the retail chain sold 65,000 phones in June, which is the highest sale through a chain. In six months, Subhiksha expects to push through a sale of at least two lakh mobiles a month. The stores stock all the major brands of cell phones, spanning a whole price band and sell for at least 5 per cent cheaper than other stores.
This year the mobile phones market in India will be Rs 20,000 crore and growing fast. According to D. Shivakumar, Country Manager, Nokia India, 66.7 million mobile phones were sold in the country in 2006, the third largest in the world after the US and China in terms of handsets sold.