Since Realme, the Chinese smartphone manufacturer, started selling smartphones in 2018, it has seen incredible success. Madhav Sheth, based in Mumbai, India, and born in 1981, the CEO of Realme India & Europe sat for an interview with NoteBookCheck. Sheth is responsible for the brand’s strategy in two of the world’s largest smartphone markets.
Sheth started the interview by talking about how the company took off, starting from India and now in “more than 61 markets.” The company is among the top four manufacturers in the world.
“Realme currently is one of the seven largest smartphone brands in the world and the fastest-growing smartphone brand in the world for the last seven or eight quarters. Even last year, we grew by around 67% year on year. We were the only brand who grew by 67%”
He explained how “Realme will be into smart homes, smart life, tech life, and a host of ecosystem products” in the coming future to cement their place in the market.
Realme’s growth in Europe saw them go from 0.1 million smartphones sold in 2019 to 1.6 million in 2020. When asked if the growth rate can rise further, Sheth said, “My target is to grow to around 10 to 15 million devices in sales in smartphones. So that’s for my EU plan. But definitely, I think we will be growing at a much faster pace and we can see the market opportunities.”
He believes that a target of selling 100 million phones by 2023 is very realistic considering their target for this year is 65 to 70 million handset sales.
When asked about Realme’s secret to becoming one of the leading smartphone brands in just three years, Sheth based his answer on keeping things simple and giving the consumers what they want with value for money.
Sheth agreed that consumers are looking mostly for high-quality cameras, big batteries, and fast screens. “I would not like to charge my phone slowly again.”
“So the Realme 8 Pro is an all-rounder phone with 50-watt fast charging, 108-megapixel camera, with an option of having lots of digital lens options available on your phone.”
With the global chip crisis, Qualcomm can’t provide enough Snapdragon chips for individual manufacturers and prices are rising. Realme, “are recovered 90% from the supply chain disruptions, but at the same point of time, though prices are rising, I would believe that we are trying to bring a lot of 5G chipsets to our most affordable and economical price points.”
Realme will give the Dimenstiy chipset range its debut in Europe.
In a topic shift from Realme the product to Realme the brand, Realme is not just about the product. It’s also about the brand. Sheth was asked about Realmeow, the mascot. How did consumers react to it and what are the future plans with Realmeow?
“See, it’s more about connecting with the user because that’s the Realme mascot. We believe that basically, a cat being an agile animal, I think, we just want it to be more connected to the users in different ways. So, as I said, our mascot being Realmeow, we are just trying to ensure that basically, people get a brand message delivered to them in the simplest and the easiest language, which they understand in the millennial language.”
After this, reporter Hannes Brecher shifted to questions from the readers, one of those being why Realme has not yet come up with a wireless charger. To which Sheth had a simple reply, “you still need the wire to the wireless charger. So you need to plug in the wireless charger and put the phone on the wireless charger.”
Sheth agreed that the cheapest smartphones are mostly hated now by consumers because they still use micro USB ports sometimes. “And hence if you see now all of the latest Realme phones, they are all type C.”
The ‘right to repair’ topic was also covered in the interview. If a Realme screen breaks and the consumer wants to replace it themselves, is it possible?
“As of now it is not BYOD, is not build your own now or, you know, do it yourself. It’s not like that. It’s not possible as of now, but we have an efficient and stable after-sales service, which is very convenient. We have focused on quality and we have also provided a convenient, fast, and trustable after-sales service. Currently, we do not do the self-repairing I think I can say. But yes, we are working on evaluating on that particular part as well. “
The interview reached a conclusion with the CEO giving an idea about the future products of his company. “Products you can see at affordable prices, at value for money prices, a lot of ecosystem products, which we are going to launch maybe along with TWS also. Yes. So I think that’s pretty much what we are going to bring.”
