Will Third Time Be the Charm for Micromax

Micromax is a name that almost every Indian who has been aware of the smartphone industry in India for the last decade is familiar with. The company is making a comeback with its new sub-brand ‘in’ to the market. Micromax has planned to invest Rs 500 crores initially for building new products. The new brand ‘in’ has been positioned to compete with the Chinese smartphone manufacturers which once forced Micromax to go off the market. One thing worthy to note here is that this will be the third time Micromax will be entering the smartphone industry. For the unaware, the second time was with ‘YU’. Let’s take a look at the history of the company and what went wrong.

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History

‘Micromax Informatics’ was incorporated as an IT software company which focused on developing embedded devices such as chipsets and processors. The company using the knowledge and resources it had pivoted to the mobile handset business. In 2010, Micromax had become one of the largest domestic companies engaged in low-cost feature smartphones in the country.  Further, in 2014, Micromax even surpassed Samsung in terms of sales. In the same year, the company became the first Indian smartphone brand to sell in Russia. All this contributed to making Micromax the 10th largest smartphone vendor in the world in 2014.

Then on December 18, 2014, Micromax started a subsidiary company called ‘YU Televentures’. It was a joint venture between Micromax Informatics Limited and Cyanogen Inc. ‘YU’ introduced the Cyanogen OS for the users with the company also holding the rights to the third-party version of Android in India. The OS was later discontinued in December 2016 when things didn’t seem to be working out for the company.

What Went Wrong for Micromax?

So after all these achievements and success, what went so wrong that it forced the company to go off the market. The reason wasn’t so much what Micromax was doing wrong but what it wasn’t doing. Chinese smartphone brands such as Xiaomi and OnePlus had come to the market and by 2016 they were gaining popularity at a rapid pace.