Gionee plans to foray into physical retail space in India

Gionee, one of the renowned Chinese smartphone brands, plans an aggressive foray into physical retail space as the company sells its entire products through offline store in India.

At present, the company has a presence in 42, 000 retail outlets with nearly 70% exclusive stores and around 555 exclusive service stations.

The leading global smartphone maker is planning to increase its exclusive stores to 275 stores by the end of 2017.

The company also unveiled a campaign called Selfiestan which is targeting the growing breed of selfie enthusiasts in the country. This campaign will feature their brand ambassador Alia Bhatt.

Gionee India CEO and managing director Arvind R. Vohra has, however, a different gameplan for the firm's service centres. He is betting big on the service centres which can be changed into exclusive stores if required.

Vohra said, "These service centres can be used as changing and upgrading or re-surfacing phones."

He went on add that the company is leaving no stone unturned to expand business in every possible way. "Service exclusivity is far more important than sales exclusivity," he added.

The company will have 18 exclusive service centres in the region. Gionee plans to increase its shop promoters workforce to 20,000 from 12,000 by the end of this year.

Vohra was of the view that the low-cost smartphones were getting sold online. The sale of phones in the range of Rs 15,000-20000 category is not growing. He further clarified that in India only 20 per cent of all the phones are getting sold online.

"We only sell 1 per cent of our stock online rest is offline," he added.