With Indian companies like Micromax, Karbonn and Lava gaining ground in smaller Indian cities, Samsung will try to combat them with its own set of exclusive stores. The Korean company plans to open 3000-4000 stores in towns that have a population of less than 100,000.
According to Samsung India’s country head, Vineet Taneja, they’re planning to setup 1,000 stores in tier IV and V cities with more to follow in the coming years.
It is indeed a big challenge since modern retailing is yet to make any entry in these small towns and villages, and at best, there will be one small street that is the retail hub. We have value-engineered our existing brand store format by lowering fixture costs so that the owner can break-even these stores in one-fourth the time than the stores in larger towns and metros.
The stores will have a mix of feature and smartphones as well as tablets, cameras and TVs (in some stores).
Samsung is currently the leader in the smartphone market followed by other players like Micromax, Nokia, Apple, Karbonn etc.
Samsung having Indian languages on their phones will be a big boon here.