 "Rahul Sharma")
Rahul Sharma enters the Oberoi Gurgaon lobby at some speed. I have been warned he has a lot on his plate already. He must go through a series of meetings and close a few things before he sets off to attend a course (the Owners President Management Program; a three-year programme with one month of learning every year) at the Harvard Business School later in the week. I have agreed to wrap up the meeting in an hour.
So 10 days after inviting him for "Lunch with BS", I am sitting at The Belvedere, the members-only club at the hotel, with the co-founder of Micromax, the company that has single-handedly overturned the mobile handset apple cart in India. The Rs 7,400-crore company is the third-largest player in the Rs 36,000-crore handset market in the country and the second-largest smartphone maker. That's a good place to be in in six years.
Sharma looks right at home - which isn't surprising, given the amount of time he spends here. "I am quite regular at this place, they know exactly what I have for lunch and send the bill directly to my office," he doesn't waste time. I suggest we go with his "regular" lunch to save time. He orders for us: a simple meal of juice, a Caesar salad and dim sums.
"So what is it like to be referred to in the media as the giant slayer? The underdog giving the Nokias and Samsungs of the world a run for their money?" I ask the lollipop question first, wondering if he feels smug. He pulls a face. "It is not as if we have arrived from nowhere and suddenly come into the reckoning. We have been in the technology business since 1999. We have done machine-to-machine, been in e-commerce even before it became fashionable. Our company used to be called Micromax Software earlier."
Indignantly, he runs through the details of his career: how he started in a manufacturing company straight out of engineering college, and how, after travelling for an hour in a company bus to reach his office and listening to the conversation around him for a year or so, he realised "this is not for me". "I convinced my father, who was a teacher by profession, to buy me a computer… he spent some Rs 60,000 on it… and I started fiddling around with it. I was interested in technology but I thought I wanted to be an architect or join an advertising agency. Uss age mein utni clarity nahin hoti [you aren't so clear about things at that age]. Things started falling in place when I got three of my friends (Rajesh Agarwal, Sumeet Arora and Vikas Jain) to join me."
"You mean there was no objection from the family?" I ask. "When Sachin Bansal (of Flipkart fame) met some of us at the Business Standard office recently, he said the biggest hurdle for a budding entrepreneur in India is the family. You were a trained engineer and you were just chucking it all up for some uncertain future..."
"Oh, I was a son after three daughters and my father was generally happy that I was doing something and my mother, who is a housewife, was happy that my father got me what I wanted. So one thing led to another and here we are…" It is hard to square his accomplishments with the down to earth, neighbourly guy sitting in front of me.
As he heaps dressing on his salad, I cut to the chase. "So you have the numbers but do you have the image? I mean would a young consumer or senior executive want to buy a Micromax phone or even own up to owning one… you know what I mean…"
"You see we have never sold our phones on price," he continues, "…jaise ki aapko nau hazaar rupae me yeh yeh yeh milega… never [for instance, you won't get this, that or the other phone for Rs 9,000]. We have sold our phones on imagery, we have highlighted the design and the technology we are offering. We want to be seen as cool, fun, in-your-face and edgy. That is why we are associated with sports and music. Why should consumers pay Rs 30,000 or more for phones when Micromax is offering them more value on a similar product?" One moment he is the guy next door, the next a dyed-in-the-wool salesman.
"When we launched our phones six years ago, people said, yeh Chinese hai [this is Chinese]. When we started offering the best features and the latest technology in our phones and roped in Akshay Kumar and Twinkle Khanna, they said oh, yeh Indian hai [oh, this is Indian]. After we got Hugh Jackman, more and more people are sitting up and saying let's check out this brand and they are not disappointed."
True, a majority of users who upgrade from feature phones to smartphones will probably go for a local brand considering that there is no significant competition from A-list brands at the entry level. But the biggest task for local brands is convincing users that they offer quality, and tier-one brands are not making it easy for them to make the first sale, spending big bucks on high-decibel advertising and innovative sales promos.
"How much did you spend on the Hugh Jackman campaign?" I butt in. "A couple of million dollars, but that's not the point. We want to make the brand aspirational. I think we have an edge in terms of our innovations - it's our biggest strength - we have nimbleness, we have a friendly go-to-consumer-directly approach. You know how I do my market research? I go to a shop, roll up my sleeves and start selling the phones - not just Micromax - to people who walk in. In one such visit, I met a painter who said he was looking for a phone that could record. Kya hota hai, people call him in the morning, agree on a price and by evening forget all about it. So he wants a phone where he can capture the agreed terms. Aisa insight focus groups se milega [will you get such insights from focus groups]?"
An unlikely emerging market pioneer, but some Micromax phones do make the cut as innovative. The brand has many firsts to its credit including the 30-day battery backup, dual-SIM dual-standby phones, universal remote control mobile phones, first quad-core budget smartphone and so on. The brand's portfolio includes close to 70 models today, ranging from feature phones to 3G Android smartphones, tablets, LED televisions, data cards et al.
"Do you still source your phones from China?" I try to catch Sharma off guard. "We are not the only ones," he replies, unruffled. "Even your Apple gets its phones made by Foxconn and Samsung by BYD." As he polishes off his salad, the waiter places the plates of dim sums with unobtrusive efficiency.
"We do our R&D, design everything in India. Hundred per cent of our LEDs, 100 per cent of our tabs are already manufactured here. We have started doing our phones here too. We have a facility in Rudrapur…" he swivels his chair with the enthusiasm of a kid ready to flaunt his new radio-controlled car and proceeds to show me some pictures of the plant taken on his Micromax Canvas Knight phone during a recent visit.
Sharma has watched the company outgrow its headquarters and anti-establishment beginnings, but he feels that maintaining the start-up spirit is what allows Micromax to stay on top of its game. But most importantly, he celebrates every big step like it's his first.
I realise we are well past the time we have set for the meeting to end. Sharma gets up to leave and insists on picking up the tab. When I say that's not how this column works, he looks thoroughly embarrassed. "So what next for Micromax?" I try to make it easy.
"We aspire to be a global brand. It is possible - we are already big in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh - you have to play just on your strengths," Sharma thanks me profusely as he steps out.
Money may dictate the way giant industries are built, but it can do nothing to stop the next hero engineer from having his dream.
