Lava, a homegrown smartphone brand, is expanding to the United Kingdom (UK) market with the launch of Agni 4 smartphone in July this year. Lava will use Amazon to sell Agni 4 there. “Being a Chinese-averse market worked as an opportunity for Lava. People in UK are seeking higher quality product at a lesser price,” said Sunil Raina, MD of Lava to The Hindu.
Event Context
In India, Lava is quite happy serving in the sub-30k price category due to volume game and thinks that anything beyond that is vanity. It wants to focus on budget and mid segment and purely smartphone business. Mr. Raina said, “We are good at smartphone and have been doing this for quite some time.” He added that Lava does not intend to venture into other product verticals as of now.
Player Focus
Like any other player in the smartphone industry, Lava is also battling the price hike issue which is quite challenging due to supply side bottleneck and macro-economic factors. Mr. Raina said that overall smartphone industry will be hit by 10-15% due to this ongoing crisis, which is not ending anytime soon. “Lava, being a smaller player, is not affected that much by this price hike,” he added.
Due to smartphone’s price hike, feature phone is witnessing growth, which is rare. Lava now sits at number 3 in that arena.
“People have started accepting Lava phones now because we worked on design, after-sales and affordability. Buyers are less sceptical about Lava phones today as they were earlier,” said Mr. Raina. He said that Lava smartphones are growing at a CAGR of 50% year-on-year. It has over 750 service centers across India and also offers servicing at home.
He said that Lava is the only Indian brand to compete with Chinese companies and has taken a share out of them. “If we can compete with them in India, we can do it anywhere in the world.”
Lava also has a roadmap for AI. Last year, it introduced its AI agent called Vayu AI, which will come down to other smartphones launched in future.
