OnePlus looking to expand its offline presence in India

OnePlus is looking to expand its presence in India, reports IANS. The company, which entered the Indian market three years ago, plans to have offline operations in 10 cities by the end of 2018. The Chinese manufacturer started its operations in India in December and it has mainly been an online-only brand.

However, OnePlus will continue to sale its devices via its online sales partner Amazon India and its own portal. "We will continue to focus on these two portals as our primary sales channels, but, going forward, we will be going offline in the top 10 cities where we are looking forward to opening our own stores," Vikas Agarwal, General Manager, OnePlus India, was quoted as saying by IANS.

"We are not going through a traditional offline channel. We will be opening our own stores and focusing on providing experience which should help us increase awareness in those cities," Agarwal added.

OnePlus opened its first "experience store" in India in Bengaluru last year and intends to open them in various metro cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and other major cities by the end of this year.

"We are almost as big as Apple in India now, which is currently the market leader in the premium segment," Agarwal added.

The company is working towards to increase the presence at e-retailer Croma stores. "We recently partnered with Croma and are present in over 20 Croma stores. This year, we are going to expand our presence in the entire 100 stores that Croma has across different cities," the company executive told IANS in an interview.

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The phone maker said the "OnePlus community" has helped it to develop quality products. "When we launched OnePlus One, we took feedback from our customers. It was taken into consideration when we developed our next product. Since then, we have maintained that level of engagement with our users," Agarwal said.

Meanwhile, OnePlus is currently setting up its own exclusive service center network in the country.

"We currently have 10 service centers operational and we are looking to open more this year," the executive added.