Micromax's Sen, without referring to Intex directly, talks about the danger of spending a small fortune and buying market share. "If business fundamentals are not strong and your quality is not good, you won’t be able to maintain your position. And this is what happened to a lot of our competitors in the past."



"The key challenge for Intex is to ensure that the inventories built through bumpedup unit shipments are cleared at a comparable pace," says Deepak Kumar, a former analyst at global market research agency IDC. While a rise in shipment share does give it a marketing talking point tactically, much more needs to be done to sustain that growth.



From a more strategic standpoint, Intex would need to further strengthen its channel partner base and, at the same time, draw out a more strategic framework towards brand building, adds Kumar, who has founded research firm B&M Nxt.



Kumar also points out another impending threat for Intex: Chinese brands, which are potentially better at packing more features into their phones at relatively lower prices. "They also have deeper pockets and have even announced a slew of local manufacturing and research and development plans in order to better localise their products," he adds. In August 2015, Xiaomi announced that it would manufacture smartphones in Andhra Pradesh; and Vivo has a factory in Greater Noida. Acceptance levels of global Chinese brands have been rising over the years, says Arvind Vohra, India chief executive of Gionee, one of the more aggressive Chinese brands in India.



Intex could face an existential crisis on another front: feature phones, which have been the mainstay of the brand, is a market in decline. From 206 million units sold in 2013, sales fell sharply to 144 million in 2015.



Carving a Niche Kawoosa of CyberMedia, however, believes that in spite of smartphones growing at 32% in 2015, and feature phones declining by 17%, India is unlikely to be a smartphone-only market in a hurry. "The predicted demise of the featurephone does not seem likely any time soon," maintains Kawoosa.



Bansal is aware of the rapid pace of change in the handset business. “If you are not able to keep pace with the change and adapt, you are bound to fail," he says. He adds that the biggest change today from three years back is that the company has reached a position from where it feels confident that it can take on the big boys. "We used to think that we would be able to carve out our niche, but can't challenge the biggies."



Richardson of Counterpoint Research believes Intex has a long way to go before it can pose any real threat to the big players. "While Intex has closed the gap, it has some way to go to overhaul Micromax," he says. The main challenge for Indian handset vendors is developing a strongly differentiated position in a rapidly commoditising market, adds Richardson.



The Bansals, meanwhile, are readying for the long haul. "We are here to stay. Ye lambi daud ka ghoda hai."

After graduating from Swami Shraddhanand College, University of Delhi in 1986, Narendra Bansal chose not to opt for the most predictable path — the one that led to the family business of grain trading in old Delhi's Naya Bazar. "It didn't excite me," recalls 53-year-old Bansal, founder of Intex Technologies, the maker of the eponymous smartphone, computer accessories, speakers and consumer durables and electronics.What did excite the then "spotting business opportunities". one was in picking up and delivering cordless phones. Thirty years ago, reminisces, the concept of pickup and delivery was missing. Bansal opened a shop at Naya Bazar in the Chandi Chowk area of Delhi, put out classified ads in newspapers and assured potential consumers of a refund if they were not happy with the service. The business did work, but was not remunerative enough. So he flitted to the next opportunity — sale of floppy discs. This too didn't last long as the venture could not be scaled.Next, Bansal borrowed a Polaroid camera from a friend, went to the Birla Temple in the Capital, took pictures of the visitors and sold them in a key chain. That lasted for a few months."It was enough to survive but didn't have much potential for growth." The trials and (mostly) errors continued till 1996, until Bansal dipped into his savings of Rs 20,000 and started selling Ethernet cards under the brand name Intex.In that first year, Intex notched up revenues of Rs 1.18 crore. That may sound paltry when juxtaposed with the Rs 3,749 crore top line the company posted in 2014-15, but it was a beginning. "Sticker lagane se brand nahin banta hai (You don't make a brand just by putting stickers). This is how my friends used to taunt me 20 years ago," recalls Bansal. "Now we are the largest Indian handset brand," he says, quoting the IDC figures for the September-ended quarter, which puts Intex marginally ahead of Indian rival Micromax in mobile phones, featurephones and smartphones combined. Recent data from another global tech research firm, Counterpoint, 2015, however, puts Micromax ahead of Intex (see Intex was Overall...). "Micromax continues to be the largest Indian handset player," thunders Shubhajit Sen, chief marketing officer, Micromax Informatics. "There is a fair gap between us and the next player."More than market share, Bansal appears fixated on revenue growth, and expects to close the year ended March 2016 with an over 100% growth in sales turnover, to Rs 8,000 crore. "We are confident of achieving this target," says Bansal over a cup of masala tea at his Okhla office in New Delhi.Towards the end of 2015, Intex found itself in the spotlight when it bought the Rajkot IPL team for two years for Rs 10 crore; the newfound visibility is perhaps much-needed, considering that the lntex label is now also on LED TVs, washing machines, and will soon be on airconditioners and refrigerators."The intention of the brand is clear. They are trying to become the Samsung of India," contends brand strategist Harish Bijoor . Intex is the true-blue Indian startup that caught the tails of the liberalisation movement in India and flew on its coattails, adds Bijoor. "Samsung needs to be wary for sure." The Korean giant sells everything from mobile devices and cameras and camcorders to personal computers and home appliances.For his part, Bansal declares that he doesn't like to be compared. "I don't want to be like anybody. If I ever try doing that, then I would always remain a follower, and not a leader," he contends. He's not to keen to talk about rivals, preferring instead to talk about — what else — his own brand. "I never talk about rivals. Let them discuss in their boardrooms how Intex has suddenly come into the limelight. A dark horse has become the winner," he declares.Bijoor reckons that Intex seems to have set its sight on a pure-play Indian game of brand domination. While the brand became popular for its in computer peripherals and speakers, what's propelled it into another league are its handsets, a business that accounts for roughly 75% of total revenues.Intex's focus on featurephones and entry-level smartphones has helped it create its own space, believes Jaipal Singh, market analyst (client devices) at IDC India. In 2015-16, for instance, Intex launched 73 smartphone models and 43 featurephones. What has also helped Intex and other local price warriors is the decline in the Nokia brand in India. "The steady demise of Nokia, especially in featurephones, has assisted local brands," avers Peter Richardson, research director, Counterpoint Research.Richardson also points out that the ease with which the Indian brands could source from the so-called original design manufacturers (ODMs), most of which are located in the Chinese manufacturing hub of Shenzhen near Hong Kong, has also boosted their prospects in India. Over the past few years, the quality of ODMs has improved dramatically even as the cost and minimum order quantities have fallen steadily. This means, says Richardson, an ambitious local brand can have exclusive designs with high specs and good build quality for attractive prices. The large global brands were not fully prepared for this trend and many of their comparably specified products began to look expensive, he adds.Add to this the fact that global brands, like Samsung, somewhat took their eye off the ball because they were fixated with trying to beat Apple. "They, therefore, didn’t orient their portfolios to do battle with aggressive local players," says Richardson.Intex's pricing strategy in a price-sensitive country like India too worked in its favour. For instance, its top-selling feature phone Eco 205 and smartphone Aqua 3G Pro are priced at Rs 1,000 and Rs 3,666, respectively. This means that if the feature phone experience is a good one, there's a high chance the consumer will be inclined to buy another Intex product while upgrading or replacing her handset.Till a year ago, Intex sold largely featurephones, a segment that's bigger than smartphones today, but one that is in decline. In 2014-15, for instance, the company sold 14.08 million feature phones, and just 4.27 million smartphones. In the current fiscal year, Intex has so far sold 14 million feature phones, and 8 million smartphones till December.What's working for Intex is its decision not to have a smartphone priced above Rs 15,000. That makes immense sense when you consider that in 2015, three out of every four smartphones shipped were priced at Rs 10,000 or less, according to a report by CyberMedia, a market research and consulting services firm.While in 2013, the average selling price of a smartphone was Rs 13,000, it had dipped to Rs 10,700 by the end of 2015. The smartphone market for sub- Rs 15,000 models was around 89% in 2015 and it is going to remain as much this year as well, says Faisal Kawoosa, lead telecom analyst at CyberMedia. Intex's cheapest smartphones are priced under Rs 5,000.When Intex started selling featurephones in 2007, it got off to a disastrous start. Everything that could go wrong, went wrong. The company's 'distributor first' mentality, which worked in business products like computer and IT peripherals, was proving to be its nemesis."Hum sochte the ki jab keyboard bik raha hai to phone bhi bik jayega (We thought that if people were buying keyboards, they would also buy phones)," says Bansal. "But we were so wrong." Bansal tried his best to push sales. He frequently changed distributors, thinking them to be culprits behind tardy sales, tied up with Disney to launch Disney phones loaded with Disney content and came up with a TV campaign.But nothing worked. "We were not consumer centric," says Bansal, adding that the approach of the company reflected in the sales of phones. In the first two years of the launch — 2007 and 2008 — the company managed to sell only 29,000 handsets. While the unsold stocks kept on piling, losses too were mounting at a rapid pace. Bansal persisted, and began rebuilding by getting the basics of a consumer business right: a sharper focus on marketing backed with a hike in ad spends (from Rs 10 crore in 2007-08 to Rs 250 crore in 2015-16); supply channels were beefed up and phones were loaded with features at affordable prices. Result: Sales almost tripled from 3.1 million units in 2012-13 to 9 million a year later.Bansal forayed into smartphones in 2012, and inducted his son Keshav into the business with the launch. "Keshav has taken the brand to the next level. He is the one responsible for the turnaround in marketing and branding," he says.One of the first things the 23-year-old who once aspired to become a model and actor did was to make the brand more mainstream by getting Bollywood actor-director Farhan Akhtar as brand ambassador. From a mass brand, it became masspirational, says Keshav, who also nudged his father to allocate large amounts for advertising and marketing. The next move was to rope in regional brand ambassadors like Telugu superstar Mahesh Babu and Tamil actor Suriya.The marketing masterstroke, according to Keshav, is buying the Rajkot Indian Premier League (IPL) team last year. Almost inevitably, the son explains the reason in cricketing metaphors. "Till three years back, we were more like a Test player. But since 2012, we have been playing T20."