We Are A Technology Brand, Capable Of Providing Right Specs At Right Price

ZTE corporation is a global major in telecommunications and information technology and is among the top five mobile handset manufacturers in its home country China and has also been doing really well in USA. Nubia is also a subsidiary brand of ZTE. In India, ZTE has been striving hard to replicate its success in other geographies. To strengthen its efforts, ZTE brought in the seasoned telecom professional Ssachin Batra as chief marketing officer of ZTE India last August. In an interaction with Nijhum Rudra & Vanshika Malhotra, Mr Batra Explains the strategy and efforts being put in by ZTE to increase its market share and mindshare in the large but highly competitive Indian mobile handset space.

- Nijhum Rudra & Vanshika Malhotra

You took over as the CMO in August 2016 and it’s been a year now. Are you satisfied with ZTE performance after taking over?

Since I joined in the year 2016, we launched our first product on Flipkart, which was the Blade A2 Plus. This was followed by a couple of launches into offline space where we never had a presence and is doing exceptionally well for us. At least, this can be deemed as something satisfactory since I joined.

What have been ZTE’s recent market strategies/initiatives to increase its reach and sales in the Indian market place?

Currently, we are not spending anything on the marketing because first of all we are a technology brand, capable of providing right specs at right price. For example, when we launched the Blade A2 Plus in February this year, with a 5.5-inch full HD Octro processor MediaTek processor, 4GB+ 32GB, 5000mAh battery with fingerprint and Uni metal body, there was no product at a price point of Rs 11,999. It was not we got the deception to the pricing; we gave the customer the product at right price. So, whatever marketing we wanted to spend we reduced the price of the product and gave to the customers. The tie when smartphone was not available below Rs 16,000, we at that time gave a product at Rs 12,000. This is what exactly I am talking about. So we don’t have a marketing strategy in place currently, having said that we will not have it. We will certainly have a complete plan in terms of marketing, but we will do it in a right way not the way the competitors are doing it today.