The success tale of Intex’s founder, Narendra Bansal is truly inspirational

The tale of Narendra Bansal’s Intex, the second major Indian cell phone manufacturer, has its commencements in a college kid’s talent for obtaining and marketing affordable electronics accessories

The disappointment confused Narendra Bansal. Finally, he had set up a₹600-crore Company dealing in computer accessories during the year 1996.

“Intex was by then a relatively well-known brand. We had made some money too; it was no longer a hand-to-mouth existence,” recounted Bansal of the 2004-07 period.

But the effort failed to meet expectations. Regardless of what he rolled out — from computers and laptop computers to light-emitting diode TVs and inverters — there were no takers. He still made attempts and rolled out feature handsets in the year 2007.

“I ran ads, created a network of dealers and even tied up with Disney to develop content for the phones,” said Bansal.

The advertisement drive for the double-sim phone had Kajal Aggarwal, a top celeb in the southern movie industry.

Bansal and his family members were not so positive any longer. Narendra Bansal’s three brothers even doubted whether Intex was destined to market just computer-related accessories.

Narendra Bansal didn’t permit emotion cloud his idea. The industrialist in him wished to give phones an additional chance; particularly when other Indian products were starting to excel and hitting the fortunes of global firms like Nokia and Blackberry.

It is not that the customer does not want an Indian brand… there is something that we are not doing right,” Bansal stated.

They afterwards excavated deeper into the biz and investigated the market. Finally, they witnessed some light.

“Until then we had been a B2B player, dealing only with dealers. We hadn’t thought from the perspective of a customer,” said Bansal.

Their initial trader, for example, used to previously sell bikes. Another trader was from the pharmaceuticals business.

 “The one reason for the phenomenal growth is that they concentrated on one particular price band of $50-55 (₹3,000-3,500),” said Tarun Pathak, senior telecom analyst, Counterpoint Technology Market Research.

Handsets currently fetch 65% of Intex’s income, propelling the firm to the second major Indian handset manufacturer slot, even temporarily overtaking market leader Micromax in the year 2015.

“Our market share increased from 1.1 per cent in 2012 to 12.7 per cent by the end of the fourth quarter of 2015,” said Rajeev Jain, Intex’s chief financial officer.