OnePlus to open Indian R&D centre soon

Indian market is the biggest revenue generator for OnePlus

OnePlus will soon be opening an R&D centre in India in line with its commitment to make India its second global headquarters by the year end. The company is looking at locations in Hydrabad, Bangalore and Chennai.

OnePlus already has a small R&D team of around five people in Bangalore centre. The new facility is expected go live by the end of this quarter. Around 10–20 percent of OnePlus’ global R&D team will be present in India. OnePlus’ R&D work in India will focus on understanding user requirements in the country, seeking partnerships with key app players in India like Paytm, testing on an ongoing basis and working closely with telecom carrier partners. Around 25–50 people are expected to be part of the new R&D team.

In 2017, OnePlus registered a revenue of over $ 1.4 billion globally, which is nearly twice its 2016 revenue. More than a third of this revenue came from India (more than $ 460 million), making it OnePlus’ largest market worldwide. One Plus is the only Chinese smartphone maker, two-thirds of whose revenue comes from outside China.

OnePlus currently employs 85 people in India. By the end of the year this number is expected to increase to 100–120 people.

Vikas Agarwal, General Manager, OnePlus India

The company managed to sell one million units of its latest flagship model — OnePlus 6 — in three weeks. Last year it took three months to reach this number. In 2014, the company sold just over a million of its first flagship phone that year.

According to the recently released Counterpoint Market Monitor Service Data Q2 2018, OnePlus has emerged as the leader in the premium smartphone segment in India. OnePlus 6 was the best-selling model in premium segment making it the leader for the full quarter (April, May, June 2018) surpassing Samsung and Apple. OnePlus was also the fastest growing smartphone brand annually, growing at 284%. In the first quarter of 2018 OnePlus had a market share of around 25 % in India, trailing behind Samsung.

Premium phones constitute less than 4 percent of the market in India. In other global markets it is 50–60 percent of the over all market.

Amazon was its first partner in the Indian market. Now OnePlus is taking this partnership model to Germany and elsewhere. The latest 6-series flagship model from OnePlus has become its most popular phone ever on JD, an e-commerce company headquartered in Beijing. OnePlus has also entered into a carrier-partnership with Elisa Oyj, a Finnish telecommunications company. “We have decided that focus should be on core products and for everything else we are going to have partners,” said Vikas Agarwal, General Manager, OnePlus India.

With around 800 people employed globally OnePlus is able to avoid HR overheads and maintain its lean framework. As a company that likes to outsource and delegate functions, OnePlus’ focus is on designing the core product.

The company launched its Make in India program with the OnePlus X in October 2015. Currently, the Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs) and several other components of the the OnePlus 6 are made in India by the company’s primary contract manufacturer — Oppo in Noida. Oppo is OnePlus’ global manufacturing partner and carries on in India the same partnership arrangement it has in China.

OnePlus was founded in December 2013 by former Oppo vice-president Pete Lau and Carl Pei. According to reports, Oppo Electronics (not Oppo Mobile) is the only institutional stockholder in OnePlus.

In the second half of 2018, OnePlus is set to open over 10 new offline touchpoints in 10 key markets. The company recently opened offline stores in Bangalore, Mumbai and Kolkata on 28th July, 2018. The stores have opened in Jayanagar, 4th Block in Bangalore, Central Mall in Mumbai and South City Mall in Kolkata. By 2019 it is expected to have 14 offline touch points.

By end of this year the company expects to have 25 service centres and 6 experience centers in the country. Its experience centre in Chennai is expected to come up by next month. Over the next two weeks the service centre in its first experience centre in Bangalore will be expanded from the basement to the first floor.

“With India becoming the second headquarters for OnePlus, we are looking to increase our focus on offline to reach out to the large majority of the Indian market that prefer tangible stores for experience before purchase. However, we will continue to be a digital-first brand,” said Vikas Agarwal. “Bangalore is the home market for OnePlus in India and has always been our most key market. With the exceptional success of the OnePlus Experience Store on Brigade Road which was our first offline store in the country, we are looking at adding one additional offline touchpoint for our customers in Bangalore,” he added.

OnePlus has also launched its Student Ambassador Program. It will be establishing this in 10 colleges this year. OnePlus now boasts of more than 5 million community members in India.

With over 1.5 million followers on Instagram, OnePlus is planning to increase its engagements on the platform. “Instagram is where people are going to discover new products. That is what we are going to focus on,”

OnePlus claims to have a Net Promoter Score of 71.2 percent in India, indicating a high customer loyalty. “This is the highest in the industry and we have always had this consistently,” said Vikas Agarwal. The Net Promoter Score is generally calculated based on responses to a single question: “How likely is it that you would recommend our company/product/service to a friend or colleague?”

OnePlus’ latest flagship, the OnePlus 6 is the first smartphone to be released in India featuring Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor with 8GB of RAM and upto 256 GB of storage. The 64 GB/128 GB/256GB variants of the phone retails at INR 34999/39,999/43,999 respectively.