SUMMARY
A Few Weeks Back, ASUS Also Signed Exclusive Partnership With Flipkart For Smartphones
The Taiwanese gadgets manufacturer seems to be reaping the Indian ecommerce unicorns’ user base to strengthen its roots in the country. Just a few weeks after signing an exclusive partnership with Flipkart for its Smartphone sale in India, the company has now formed a tie-up with Alibaba and Paytm backed Paytm Mall for laptops.
As stated by ASUS in a media interaction, the ASUS brand store is now available on Paytm Mall and will offer an exclusive series of laptops to the Indian millennials.
Under the partnership, Paytm Mall will be the primary sales channel, for ASUS Vivobook X507 and both the companies will collaborate in the co-creation of new products for the Indian market based on consumer insights. On the marketing front, both companies will extensively support each other in the planning and execution of digital experience zones as well as will set up 5000 O2O stores in the country.
The idea to introduce the digital experience zones is to simplify the buying procedure for customers.
Also, Paytm Mall has announced to Launch its PoS terminal, in order to become platform agnostic. As Paytm Mall COO Amit Sinha said, “ the software of Paytm Mall PoS will be cheaper than others and will be based on a subscription model. It will be cloud-based and platform agnostic.”
With the PoS solution, the company claims that the shopkeepers can now manage their store inventory on the cloud with complete visibility on the available/required stock, view their sales, manage pending orders, instant customer billing/payments, create/execute offers and exclusive promotions.
Sinha claimed that the company has doubled its market share from 7% to 13-15% in last six months by enabling small shopkeepers with services such as better access to customer, payment and invoicing, financial services as well as maintaining the supply end.
Commenting on the partnership, Sinha added, ” Our O2O model is deeply in sync with what the offline shopkeepers need and hence we are offering a unified solution, Paytm Mall PoS. They can now cater to walk-in customers conveniently and can also fulfil online orders locally through this connected PoS system. In the first phase, we are enabling Asus branded offline store and will soon be expanding further.”
Under the partnership, the duo has launched ASUS Vivobook X507, which comes with a fingerprint sensor and a weight of 1.68 kg, at a price of INR 21,990.
On the partnership, Leon Yu, Regional Head South Asia and India, Asus India, said, “We are looking forward to the implementation of innovative customer-centric steps to enhance customer buying experience and significantly improve operating efficiency with Paytm Mall.”
As per a November 2017 IDC report, currently, HP leads the Indian Laptop market with 31.1% share in Q3 2017. It is followed closely by Lenovo (24.1%) and Dell Inc (20%). Overall, the country’s electronics market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 41% for three more years to cross $400 Bn by 2020, according to a joint study by the industry chamber Assocham and NEC Technologies.
ASUS is trying to enter the Indian smartphone and laptop market at times when the foreign players like Xiaomi, Oppo and the traditional ones like Samsung, Nokia, Lenovo, Dell have their strategies already in place to woo the Indian consumer.
However, with the number of internet users in the country expected to reach 500 Mn by June 2018, online buyers in India poised to reach 175 Mn and with India touted to be a young nation by 2020, the time is still ripe for claiming the dominance.
