Texplicit Ep. 2 - The Rise And Fall Of Micromax

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey guys welcome to igon it's time for episode two of explicit and as the title suggests it's time to take a brief look at the history the rise and the eventual fall from grace for Micromax but before we do that hey city turn the studio lights on the Micromax orange let's get started so you've probably heard the name Micromax it's one of the most infamous technology brands of India it was a company that was formed in India but a lot of people don't really know the history and how it got to its peak in 2014 where the company had a net valuation of upwards of 20,000 crows yes that massive number was actually a valuation of an Indian tech startup which was formed only about 14 years before that in 2000 is when Micromax actually started as a supplier of GSM enabled PC or landline phones for those who have recently joined us on this earth a PC or phone is one of those things where you would need to go to a shop to make a phone call before the advent of mobile phones or even when mobile phones weren't as common thing as they are today people had to go and make phone calls by depositing money at a shop yes it may sound alien to a lot of you but it is the reality and Micromax was a supplier on behalf of Nokia and they were also supplying to tell occurs like Airtel and national telecom companies and they just were enjoying themselves they were making money as the economy was booming this was the start of business for founders including Rahul Sharma had started Micromax and it just was doing really well in 2014 is when those guys looked at the market and said that the mobile phone market not the smartphone but the feature phone market is gonna really take on for India and they started to look at options of launching mobile phones in India now as is the case today this is not lot of manufacturing or any kind of research or development for mobile phones in India so Micromax jumped over to China and started to look at existing manufacturers to buy products that they could rebrand and then sell in India and then create an ecosystem for their own brand so to speak and that is how Micromax informatics was formed in 2005 now Micromax phones were selling really well because of several reasons first they were really cheap and then there was this affinity of an Indian brand selling a product and there was this attachment with the Indian brand so they were competing with brands like Samsung and Nokia which was really big in the market and they were sort of trying to take over from that market space later on Micromax was one of the first companies to launch a budget Android device the Android a 60 was one of the first phones that I can or me actually reviewed and that is how Micromax got into the Android space and eventually went on to make the canvas series so 2010 was a changing moment for Micromax a lot of new developments were happening they started building Android phones and by 2013 they were rich enough to hire hugh jackman as their brand ambassador they launched a phone called the canvas turbo which was represented by Hugh Jackman and in October of 2013 he came on as the brand ambassador for the company and at that time Hugh Jackman had just become Wolverine and it was one of the biggest movies and then Hugh Jackman was one of the biggest stars and Micromax on a global level managed to get Hugh Jackman as their brand ambassador another thing happened for Micromax in just a couple of months they became the largest selling smartphone manufacturer in India surpassing Samsung by huge margins and then also became the 10th largest smartphone manufacturer globally and putting manufacturer in quotes because I'm eventually going to get to that Micromax was really enjoying themselves they were sponsoring all sorts of events they sponsored the Asia Cup they were sponsoring concerts for singers and artists like Bryan Adams Snoop Dogg came to India on a micro Mac sponsorship there was a lot of action around one of the richest Indian telecom companies at one point of time they were bigger than flip kart snap deal and all of these other tech startups combined Micromax was really enjoying life and that's when they started to diversify and get into things like televisions and air conditioning but the end of 2014 also marked the end of a glorious era for micro max and that is purely because China has started to see potential in India and that is when Chinese manufacturers like Xiaomi and oneplus and all of these other brands started to target India and start to bring their operations and their local offices to India to eventually try and get a share of the Indian smartphone market now if you haven't already seen explicit episode 1 in that we talked about how Micromax managed to put a ban on the sale of the oneplus one phone in India and that is because Micromax with the amount of money they had at this time managed to get an exclusive partnership for CyanogenMod which was an operating system for micro max's own subsidiary phones called you mobiles but that didn't stop chinese smartphone makers from coming to india and tiny smartphone makers had one advantage over Micromax and that was that most chinese smartphone makers were not only designing but also developing and creating products in-house which allowed them to not only make their phones more robust but also cheaper and then also sort out issues that you would have with the phone in a longer run now at this time the gates were just opening for smartphone makers later on Oppo vivo and all their subsidiary started to pour into the Indian market and take over the market like never before now this is where micro max is weakness started to show even though they were constantly pushing a make in India platform micro max was never really developing phones and that is their biggest downfall what Micromax failed to realize was that they could have been the Xiaomi of India now Xiaomi did a lot to create an image for a Chinese smartphone before Xiaomi is entry into the market people would look at any smartphones as phones with four SIM cards and eight batteries in the box and you could talk for days but the phones would never really work but Xiaomi changed that perception by launching their main series and then eventually the redmi phones which are now one of the most loved phones and hence xiaomi is the biggest smartphone seller in india Micromax failed to do this Micromax failed to look at a potential where they could have set up their own R&D their own lab and even their own manufacturing facility in india and designed developed and created their own smartphone instead of buying from China all the time and this is where the downfall of Micromax really began the company went from a total net worth of upwards of 20,000 euros almost down to 1/4 of their original net worth in 2018 in fact Micro maxes main CEO Rahul Sharma his net worth is estimated to have gone down from 4000 crores to about 600 crores when he left the company in an attempt to start and look at new ventures including what he's working on now which is called revolt motors which is a electric bike company now a lot of other things happen with Micromax the main chief marketing officer of the company quit and Micromax hired a team from Samsung led by vineeth Tunisia who managed to bring the entire marketing team from Samsung to Micromax in an attempt to implement marketing and some order to this otherwise chaotic company Micromax had a massive new office they had a big team but it wasn't really organized nothing was really happening in the way the company intended and hence everything started to fall apart really quickly and the new team that came from Samson didn't really understand the core of Micromax they wanted to create new products but they were always late to market their marketing was weak if any and they eventually started to lose out so what we what we would in case you see a campaign out very soon in August where in case there are devices which which people need updates on we will give them to you focus you see a lot of service camps we're free updates would be given we don't expect the customer to come to us but we'll try to be in strategic locations across cities where all they do is even if they walk across would be a one-man campaign across the top hundred and forty four cities where people can easily come across and just give us their phone give us half of their time that we can reflash them the one promising brand that did emerge from Micromax was you and it was supposed to be a online smartphone in fact what oneplus is doing today is what you aimed to do a couple of years back and it would have actually been successful the first few phones from you were actually well-received and people really liked them but then the company just disappeared they'd stopped making phones they didn't even want to talk about them they made an offline phone all of a sudden so the third phone from the company was an offline phone and it wasn't even sold online so the company lost track and it didn't have focus of developing phones and hence the fall from grace for Micromax now Micromax is still a fairly large company but their phone development market has completely fallen down and in general the respect for Micromax phones is also completely gone from the market they always suffered with services and warranties and that is purely because they were buying phones from a manufacturer and when that manufacturer stopped making that phone spares and spare parts for that phone stopped becoming available and hence Micromax always struggled in providing service to the customer because they never really had enough space and hence people were always pissed off with Micromax because if your phone ever went in for service it would be a few months before you even got your device back a reason being that our hockey stick in terms of a sale has gone up so tremendously so therefore again it's our fault it's our management problem by correcting and right now as we speak we're trying to ensure that we come to the massive curve of sales with service it's it's our mistake but we're not it's not that we're not you know we're not looking or taking care of it we now Micromax still has an opportunity in their hands and this is basically I can advise if Micromax wants to bring back the glory of Micromax the company should start designing and developing their own phones putting some effort into an operating system that would really work for the Indian market create a custom ecosystem and then design a product that would work in India designed for Indians made by Indians it would do really well but the company still fails to understand this concept and continues to buy cheap phones from China flooding the Indian market with crappy designs poorly built hardware and then poorly serviced in ecosystem and infrastructure so if you buy a Micromax phone if it works it works till the end if it fails you're basically stuck with what you have and that is the story of micro Max and that is how Micromax fell from grace the funny thing is that the end of micro Max was almost like the starting of micro max we don't really know what happened and how they stopped making any devices if they're making any new phones you can still buy a few phones on Amazon and they do list phones on their website but apparently their headquarters in Gurgaon is gone and their infamous ugly metro station has now been renamed and the Micromax branding is completely gone so they're in a strange place and they've abruptly disappeared they don't seem to be spending on marketing as much and they don't seem to be doing any kind of advertising for their phones so the end of micro max whether it's completely ended or whether it's going to come back is something that we'll have to see in the near future but with that that's it for our video guys if you liked it don't forget to smash the like button in the next episode of explicit we cover one of the topics that you suggest for us below so what do you want us to cover in episode 3 episode 4 episode 5 do let us know in the comment section below if you enjoy this episode do let us know in the comment section below as well don't forget to hit the like button and hit the subscribe button if you're not already a part of TMI again hit the bell notification icon to know the next time we upload it explicit episode this has been Murat I'll see you guys in the next explicit I said it without fumbling youhey guys welcome to igon it's time for episode two of explicit and as the title suggests it's time to take a brief look at the history the rise and the eventual fall from grace for Micromax but before we do that hey city turn the studio lights on the Micromax orange let's get started so you've probably heard the name Micromax it's one of the most infamous technology brands of India it was a company that was formed in India but a lot of people don't really know the history and how it got to its peak in 2014 where the company had a net valuation of upwards of 20,000 crows yes that massive number was actually a valuation of an Indian tech startup which was formed only about 14 years before that in 2000 is when Micromax actually started as a supplier of GSM enabled PC or landline phones for those who have recently joined us on this earth a PC or phone is one of those things where you would need to go to a shop to make a phone call before the advent of mobile phones or even when mobile phones weren't as common thing as they are today people had to go and make phone calls by depositing money at a shop yes it may sound alien to a lot of you but it is the reality and Micromax was a supplier on behalf of Nokia and they were also supplying to tell occurs like Airtel and national telecom companies and they just were enjoying themselves they were making money as the economy was booming this was the start of business for founders including Rahul Sharma had started Micromax and it just was doing really well in 2014 is when those guys looked at the market and said that the mobile phone market not the smartphone but the feature phone market is gonna really take on for India and they started to look at options of launching mobile phones in India now as is the case today this is not lot of manufacturing or any kind of research or development for mobile phones in India so Micromax jumped over to China and started to look at existing manufacturers to buy products that they could rebrand and then sell in India and then create an ecosystem for their own brand so to speak and that is how Micromax informatics was formed in 2005 now Micromax phones were selling really well because of several reasons first they were really cheap and then there was this affinity of an Indian brand selling a product and there was this attachment with the Indian brand so they were competing with brands like Samsung and Nokia which was really big in the market and they were sort of trying to take over from that market space later on Micromax was one of the first companies to launch a budget Android device the Android a 60 was one of the first phones that I can or me actually reviewed and that is how Micromax got into the Android space and eventually went on to make the canvas series so 2010 was a changing moment for Micromax a lot of new developments were happening they started building Android phones and by 2013 they were rich enough to hire hugh jackman as their brand ambassador they launched a phone called the canvas turbo which was represented by Hugh Jackman and in October of 2013 he came on as the brand ambassador for the company and at that time Hugh Jackman had just become Wolverine and it was one of the biggest movies and then Hugh Jackman was one of the biggest stars and Micromax on a global level managed to get Hugh Jackman as their brand ambassador another thing happened for Micromax in just a couple of months they became the largest selling smartphone manufacturer in India surpassing Samsung by huge margins and then also became the 10th largest smartphone manufacturer globally and putting manufacturer in quotes because I'm eventually going to get to that Micromax was really enjoying themselves they were sponsoring all sorts of events they sponsored the Asia Cup they were sponsoring concerts for singers and artists like Bryan Adams Snoop Dogg came to India on a micro Mac sponsorship there was a lot of action around one of the richest Indian telecom companies at one point of time they were bigger than flip kart snap deal and all of these other tech startups combined Micromax was really enjoying life and that's when they started to diversify and get into things like televisions and air conditioning but the end of 2014 also marked the end of a glorious era for micro max and that is purely because China has started to see potential in India and that is when Chinese manufacturers like Xiaomi and oneplus and all of these other brands started to target India and start to bring their operations and their local offices to India to eventually try and get a share of the Indian smartphone market now if you haven't already seen explicit episode 1 in that we talked about how Micromax managed to put a ban on the sale of the oneplus one phone in India and that is because Micromax with the amount of money they had at this time managed to get an exclusive partnership for CyanogenMod which was an operating system for micro max's own subsidiary phones called you mobiles but that didn't stop chinese smartphone makers from coming to india and tiny smartphone makers had one advantage over Micromax and that was that most chinese smartphone makers were not only designing but also developing and creating products in-house which allowed them to not only make their phones more robust but also cheaper and then also sort out issues that you would have with the phone in a longer run now at this time the gates were just opening for smartphone makers later on Oppo vivo and all their subsidiary started to pour into the Indian market and take over the market like never before now this is where micro max is weakness started to show even though they were constantly pushing a make in India platform micro max was never really developing phones and that is their biggest downfall what Micromax failed to realize was that they could have been the Xiaomi of India now Xiaomi did a lot to create an image for a Chinese smartphone before Xiaomi is entry into the market people would look at any smartphones as phones with four SIM cards and eight batteries in the box and you could talk for days but the phones would never really work but Xiaomi changed that perception by launching their main series and then eventually the redmi phones which are now one of the most loved phones and hence xiaomi is the biggest smartphone seller in india Micromax failed to do this Micromax failed to look at a potential where they could have set up their own R&D their own lab and even their own manufacturing facility in india and designed developed and created their own smartphone instead of buying from China all the time and this is where the downfall of Micromax really began the company went from a total net worth of upwards of 20,000 euros almost down to 1/4 of their original net worth in 2018 in fact Micro maxes main CEO Rahul Sharma his net worth is estimated to have gone down from 4000 crores to about 600 crores when he left the company in an attempt to start and look at new ventures including what he's working on now which is called revolt motors which is a electric bike company now a lot of other things happen with Micromax the main chief marketing officer of the company quit and Micromax hired a team from Samsung led by vineeth Tunisia who managed to bring the entire marketing team from Samsung to Micromax in an attempt to implement marketing and some order to this otherwise chaotic company Micromax had a massive new office they had a big team but it wasn't really organized nothing was really happening in the way the company intended and hence everything started to fall apart really quickly and the new team that came from Samson didn't really understand the core of Micromax they wanted to create new products but they were always late to market their marketing was weak if any and they eventually started to lose out so what we what we would in case you see a campaign out very soon in August where in case there are devices which which people need updates on we will give them to you focus you see a lot of service camps we're free updates would be given we don't expect the customer to come to us but we'll try to be in strategic locations across cities where all they do is even if they walk across would be a one-man campaign across the top hundred and forty four cities where people can easily come across and just give us their phone give us half of their time that we can reflash them the one promising brand that did emerge from Micromax was you and it was supposed to be a online smartphone in fact what oneplus is doing today is what you aimed to do a couple of years back and it would have actually been successful the first few phones from you were actually well-received and people really liked them but then the company just disappeared they'd stopped making phones they didn't even want to talk about them they made an offline phone all of a sudden so the third phone from the company was an offline phone and it wasn't even sold online so the company lost track and it didn't have focus of developing phones and hence the fall from grace for Micromax now Micromax is still a fairly large company but their phone development market has completely fallen down and in general the respect for Micromax phones is also completely gone from the market they always suffered with services and warranties and that is purely because they were buying phones from a manufacturer and when that manufacturer stopped making that phone spares and spare parts for that phone stopped becoming available and hence Micromax always struggled in providing service to the customer because they never really had enough space and hence people were always pissed off with Micromax because if your phone ever went in for service it would be a few months before you even got your device back a reason being that our hockey stick in terms of a sale has gone up so tremendously so therefore again it's our fault it's our management problem by correcting and right now as we speak we're trying to ensure that we come to the massive curve of sales with service it's it's our mistake but we're not it's not that we're not you know we're not looking or taking care of it we now Micromax still has an opportunity in their hands and this is basically I can advise if Micromax wants to bring back the glory of Micromax the company should start designing and developing their own phones putting some effort into an operating system that would really work for the Indian market create a custom ecosystem and then design a product that would work in India designed for Indians made by Indians it would do really well but the company still fails to understand this concept and continues to buy cheap phones from China flooding the Indian market with crappy designs poorly built hardware and then poorly serviced in ecosystem and infrastructure so if you buy a Micromax phone if it works it works till the end if it fails you're basically stuck with what you have and that is the story of micro Max and that is how Micromax fell from grace the funny thing is that the end of micro Max was almost like the starting of micro max we don't really know what happened and how they stopped making any devices if they're making any new phones you can still buy a few phones on Amazon and they do list phones on their website but apparently their headquarters in Gurgaon is gone and their infamous ugly metro station has now been renamed and the Micromax branding is completely gone so they're in a strange place and they've abruptly disappeared they don't seem to be spending on marketing as much and they don't seem to be doing any kind of advertising for their phones so the end of micro max whether it's completely ended or whether it's going to come back is something that we'll have to see in the near future but with that that's it for our video guys if you liked it don't forget to smash the like button in the next episode of explicit we cover one of the topics that you suggest for us below so what do you want us to cover in episode 3 episode 4 episode 5 do let us know in the comment section below if you enjoy this episode do let us know in the comment section below as well don't forget to hit the like button and hit the subscribe button if you're not already a part of TMI again hit the bell notification icon to know the next time we upload it explicit episode this has been Murat I'll see you guys in the next explicit I said it without fumbling you\n"