The Delhi and Bengaluru-based Company Karbonn acquired the brand license of Japanese consumer electronics brand Sansui to sell their products in the Indian market. Karbonn is just one amongst the various Indian mobile brands like Micromax and Intex that experienced a hit with the arrival of Xiaomi and other Chinese giants in the field. Just like Micromax and Intex, Karbonn too is trying to grab the market in other fields in the electronics and electrical industry, like LED TV, home theatre system, washing machine and so on.
Sansui is a well-known brand in the Indian market. Up until now, Videocon had the rights to sell Sansui products in India but the owners did not want to renew the contract with Videocon after a 17-year long partnership ending in 2018 post Diwali. Hong-Kong listed Nimble, the owners of Sansui, did not want to renew the contract due to troubled times going on in Videocon in the recent past.
Karbonn, a company partly owned by Jaina Group, will sell the Sansui products through offline stores as well as Flipkart. Also, all the prices would be at par with the prices given by their major competitors Xiaomi and TCL. That is the only way to take a share of the market, which Xiaomi is slowly taking over a huge chunk of itself. Karbonn is planning to have a plant set up for the manufacturing and assembling of TV and other major appliances in India itself but it would take some time as of now. However, they are starting with contracted manufacturing in India as of now and would be rolling their products in the market from July.
We all know Micromax and Intex have failed to come up with any real competition in the TV and appliances market in India like Xiaomi has, but it may not be the case for Sansui, as it is already an established brand. Moreover, its exit from the Indian market was not for too long, just a few months. To set things straight, Karbonn has hired Amitabh Tiwari, former CEO of Videocon’s Kail. Kail was the subsidiary of Videocon that handled Sansui and Kelvinator appliances. Amitabh is a veteran in the consumer electronics market with a ton of experience under his belt. Therefore, it is safe to say that Karbonn has a good leader at the helm to lead the revamped Sansui team in India.
Jaina Group is not stopping here. The group is in talks with Taiwan’s top smartphone brand HTC to get the brand license to sell its products in India. HTC is another brand that had slowly left the Indian market for the good and it would be interesting to see how the people receive it once it’s back.
