Nokia Reloaded

Finnish handset maker Nokia is making a bold comeback in its new avatar, but can it relive its glory days?

- Rajiv Singh

A mechanical engineer, it’s easy to assume, would be obsessed with processes. Ajey Mehta, an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, defies the stereotype. As vice president and country head (India) of HMD Global—the Finnish company with a licence to sell Nokia-branded phones—Mehta is not consumed with physics. He is more immersed in reviving the chemistry of the Nokia brand with consumers.

For somebody with a marketing and finance background from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, Mehta is again an aberration when it comes to numbers. After spending over 13 years believes in with Nokia and Microsoft showing perseverance in different capacities, he in the face of reckons numbers are a adversity means and not an end.

“It’s neither in my DNA nor in the company’s DNA to thump one’s chest,” says Mehta, alluding to the startling pace with which Nokia broke into the top five feature phone brands in India within a year of re-entering the country.

With a 7.3 percent market share, Nokia has become the fourth biggest feature phone maker during the first quarter of this year (January- March 2018), according to market research firm Counterpoint Research. The smartphone numbers too are impressive: From 34th in the pecking order in the second quarter of last year, the Finnish company has moved to eighth position with a 3 percent market share. Though 3 percent looks meagre, consider that, with just a 3.4 percent share, Chinese label Honor is the fifth largest smartphone brand in India.

For a brand that once overwhelmingly dominated the Indian market, but lost out to Korean giant Samsung and much nimbler Indian players led by Micromax, the comeback with a new owner and new operating system—Android—sounds fairytale-ish. Mehta, however, assures you it’s been anything but that.