Simoco Telecommunications (South Asia) Limited is planning to launch its own brand of GSM mobile handsets with an investment of Rs 60-70 crore, targeting a Rs 70-80 crore turnover from eastern India alone this fiscal.
"We are focussing on the mid-segment market. We are mainly interested in offering affordable handsets without compromising on the quality. Our target is to offer handsets that would have a 1.3 mega pixel camera, 32 MB internal memory, video recording, and everything that people look for while buying a mobile, for less than Rs 3,000," claimed Sanjay Ghosh, managing director of the company.
"We intend to market our handsets through select distributors all over West Bengal as well as neighbouring states like Bihar, Jharkhand and Orissa before the end of this year. We should also have service centres in Siliguri, Durgapur and Kolkata within the next 3 months," said Ghosh.
"We are looking at capturing a 3 per cent market share in eastern India by the end of this year," said Utpal Sen, associate vice-president (operations) of Simoco.
The handsets were being manufactured at its factory in United Kingdom with analog technology drawn from the company's Salt Lake factory in Kolkata.
At present, the models on offer range between Rs 2,000 and Rs 9,500. "We would export our handsets, under the same brand name, to Bangladesh by mid-October. We would also be looking at Srilanka and Nepal. We are expecting revenue of Rs 15-20 crore from Bangladesh alone," said Ghosh.
Simoco registered a turnover of Rs 40 crore last year.
"We are developing our radio and GSM software too, under the company name Quantus, a subsidiary of Simoco," said Ghosh.
The company had about 20 software engineers at present and would employ about 100 in the next few months. "Our next focus would be vehicle tracking systems, which we should be able to kick-start by the end of this year," said Ghosh.
