Mobile phone retailing gets on speed dial

Competition has started hotting up in the mobile phone retailing market. Hot Spot Distribution India, a leading mobile phone and lifestyle multimedia retailer and distributor under the brand name Hot Spot, is bullish on the Indian mobile phone retail market. The company, which has set up 200 mobile retail stores in just seven months in India, is now planning to set up 1,500 stores within the next 18 months.

According to Sanjeev Mahajan, CEO, Hot Spot, “India currently sells 5 billion pieces of mobile phones every month. Indian mobile phone retailers follow the best practices in terms of Customer relationship Management (CRM), function on a negative working capital and are part of the community. Hence, global players should look to India in order to learn best practices of mobile retailing. It’s not the retail space but the people active in the retailing business that will spur the market growth.”

In a recent internal study conducted by Nokia, the base of mobile phone retailers in India is expected to grow from 3 lakh to 10 lakh by 2010. During the same period, mobile phone retailing market in India is expected to contribute 70% to the overall retail sector.

Mahajan further added, “Currently, we are growing at the rate of 40%. Our cluster approach in Delhi has been a leading factor in spurring more volumes.”

Similarly, Essar Telecom Retail plans to set up over 2500 stores in the next 3 years across 600 cities, thus covering virtually every major town in every state across India. Over seventy stores have already been launched and are serving customers across Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Chennai, Bangalore, Pune, Chandigarh and Ahmedabad.

Another 100 stores are scheduled to come within the next 6-8 weeks. The chain would be almost 600 stores strong, spanning the top 100 cities and towns, within the next 6 months.