Kiran Tom Sajan

Bengaluru: Motorola has no immediate plan to sell its smartphones through retail stores in India despite some of its rivals like Xiaomi beginning to focus on offline sales too.

Amit Boni, the India business head of Motorola, said the company would continue its exclusive partnership with e-commerce company Flipkart.

“It is important that when you take a strategic bet, you stand by it and make it work. That’s what we are doing with the Flipkart partnership. You need to look into other channels of sales only when your present channel is not sound enough,” Boni told TOI.

Motorola, however, is making one offline move. On Tuesday , it inaugurated a service centre called Moto Care at Jayanagar in Bengaluru, the first such in the world. Moto Care will showcase all its devices and accessories and provide repair services. The store will not sell products, but consumers can place online orders for the devices from the store.

“We believe that there’s a certain set of customers who wants to see the device before buying it. We are making sure that we are opening up to them too,” Boni said.

Motorola is said to be among the top five mobile brands in India. Boni said bringing Moto Care first to India speaks of the focus the brand has on India. “We will open more such stores across the country in the coming days,” he said.

Motorola’s global brand and strategy lead Jill A Weck told TOI that Moto Care would also improve the existing service centres. The handset-maker has 150-odd authorized service centres in India. “We are incorporating the elements of our brand and refreshing the service stores to make them look new. We will also relocate the centres that are hard to find and put them more on front-faced streets,” she said.

The US-based company is planning to bring out a 4G-compatible Moto E smartphone in India very soon as it looks to make the most from the strengthening 4G network in the country. “We do believe that the future is 4G. But the Indian market is still driven largely by the value devices. And there are not going to be enough 4G-compatible options at the lower end. Moto E with 4G-compatibility will be a value device,” Boni said.

