India Is an Important Market For Us: Gerardo Taglianetti

In 2009 Gerardo Taglianetti, founded Phonup amongst first companies in Italy which specialized in collecting  second hand mobile phones. In 2010 the business became online service platform  for buying and selling both second hand and refurbished mobiles/tablets From 2013 company is Franchising stores dedicated to buying/reselling of pre owned mobiles and tablets with 12 months warrantyPhonup has marked its presence in UK, Brazil already. Recently, the brand has entered India by opening its first master franchise store in Gurgaon. Taglianetti was present during Gurgaon launch..

Interview excerpts..

Kindly shed light on international presence of the brand? Also what is the rationale behind India foray?

We have 50 stores spread across Italy along with decent presence in UK and Brazil.  We specialize in express repair, this means people can come and see the repair in front of them. We sell pre-owned and refurbish mobile phones along with mobile accessories. India is a big market as far as smartphone consumption is concerned. India is very important market for us.

What are the growth plans for Indian market? How many new stores the company is looking to open by next financial year?

We are going to open four stores on franchise model over next few days. We have just opened our first flagship store in Gurgaon. We are looking to expand pan very shortly with franchise model.

How you are sourcing the old handsets? Also, mobile is the category where technology keeps upgrading very quickly along with huge price slash. In such scenario, how you will justify the value of your product compared to unorganized market?

We have our own channel of sourcing goods. We would not target the models which are more than two years old also there is a percentage of people who change their phones very quickly. We will sell every model with 12 month warranty scheme. There is no player in India which offer warranty on refurbish handsets. We are committed to bring more and more transparency in entire buying cycle. It will not be only discounts that will attract the customers, there many intangible benefits for customers if he/she chose to buy phone from us. There are many freebies attached with every purchase.

Why are you not going online since refurbish is a emerging category in online space?

Mobile is the category where people want to experience the product before actually buying it. Touch and feel is very important before actual purchase. In case online, even with big marketplaces, many fraudulent activities have been reported in the past where people have actually received a box filled with stores. I do not want my end customer to suffer because of any mall practice. I want to initiate a business where customer can come, see and compare before buying.

What kind of models the company would retail? The focus would be on high end phones only?

We are particularly targeting the Smartphones starting from Rs7000; however, the assortment would vary company to company. For example, we will particularly offer 3G handsets in small towns since 4G connectivity is still an issue in rural areas. We will completely go by local area franchisees as far as assortment is concerned since they know the local market better than us. We are ready to give end to end support to our area franchisees starting from manpower to training to fixture support to branding support and so on.

Are you in discussion with mobile handset manufactures to recycle the reburbuish good?

Yes we are in discussion with many brands; however, we cannot name them yet.

What is your projection for initial years?

Initial walk-ins numbers are very encouraging, and we are looking to sell 400-500 handsets every month.