Why Micromax is struggling?

Micromax was incorporated as Micromax Informatics Ltd. headquartered in Gurgaon, Haryana, India in the year 2000 by Rahul Sharma and Rohit Patel.

It began selling mobile phones in 2008, focusing on democratizing technology for the masses to compete with international players.

By 2010, Micromax was one of the largest domestic companies making handsets in the low-cost featured phone segment in India.

There was a time when you could have seen Micromax in every middle-class household in India. Micromax canvas models became the talk of the town. Micromax handsets were made by a Chinese company and were marketed by Micromax in India.

Their smartphones were affordable and even Micromax made touchscreen smartphones possible for the lower middle class.

Micromax ranked among the top 10 global handset vendors with a 1.8% market share during the January-March quarter, according to research firm Gartner. Gartner's data showed the total sales stood at 460.3 million units during the first quarter of 2015, a 2.5% increase from the year-ago period.

In light of their strong smartphone sales in the emerging markets, the Indian and Chinese phone manufacturers increased their footprint during the first quarter of 2015. Six of them were in the top 10 in the first quarter of 2015.

At the time Micromax was sky high but was unaware of the thunders and storm coming to destroy its flight.

Reasons why Micromax struggled:

Not anticipating future trends :

It was 2016 when things started going wrong for Micromax.

Many Chinese smartphone giants have entered the market of India and were doing good but not like Micromax.

It was the year of the Telecomm revolution when reliance launched Jio in September 2016 offering free 4g data and voice services. Jio announced that it had acquired 1.6 crores (16 million) subscribers.

And this was the time when Xiaomi launched Mi note 4 and claimed that it sold 5 million Redmi Note 4 units in just six months.

Customers started looking for 4g smartphones and other companies like Oppo, Vivo, Samsung, etc. followed the suit but on the other hand, Micromax had plenty of 3g smartphones to get rid of.

These companies started giving huge discounts to acquire market share and even e-commerce giants like Amazon, Flipkart worked as salt on burns.

Lack of research and development and innovation :

When other smartphone companies were launching phones every month Micromax lagged behind and was focused on cheap products.

Micromax lacked innovation and their smartphone interface gets old and even their smartphones used to hang very often. Their phones were slow and were not futuristic. It seems that they were too shy for innovation.

Unable to compete :

Mobile and electronics is a hyper-competitive market in India with great players. Everyone flooded the market with advertisements and marketing, hiring famous celebrities and paid influencers of social media and video sharing platforms. On the other hand, Micromax sales started falling drastically. Xiaomi, oppo, Vivo were rising with their unique marketing strategies. They sponsored almost every show and event in India and eventually acquired a larger market share. While Micromax started losing its customers and had a high churn rate. Micromax was unable to adapt to the rapid change in the market and their name started fading away.

Outdated Technology :

During the technological shift, people were now looking for advanced specifications and features at affordable prices. And after the internet revolution customers became smarter and started looking for smartphone reviews on Amazon, YouTube, etc. People started comparing smartphones and analyzing them more deeply and even advantage of one factor would be preferred more. Micromax outdated technology, products bad reviews and feedback clears the dew off the window.

Micromax gets completely dethroned by the competitors. But recently Micromax announced that they will come back with newer products.

Well, that’s the case study of Why Micromax is struggling?.