Fitbit has announced their debut in India: they will be launching 4 products in the range of Rs 4000 to Rs 19900 on July 1st. Amazon India has been selected as their exclusive launch partner. As per reports, they will go offline during the peak of Diwali season.
Steve Morley, vice-president and general manager – Asia Pacific for Fitbit, said, “We are establishing an Indian entity and the first employees will be joining soon. We are here for a proper brand launch and Amazon will be our launch partner,”
To start with, Fitbit will introduce 4 products in India: Zip, Flex, Charge HR and Surge. Priced Rs 12,990, Charge HR has a unique feature of monitoring heard rate, which can be their USP. Surge, the most expensive Fitbit product in India will have GPS feature as well.
Fitbit: Global Leader of Wearable Gadgets
Fitbit was amongst the first companies to launch a wearable gadget way back in 2009. As of now, they have sold more than 20 million units in 43 countries; they have 700 employees across 50,000 stores all over the world.
In the US, Fitbit has captured 68% of the US market for wearable and fitness gadgets (by dollars), and last year they sold 11 million units, which was almost double their prediction.
Just last month, Fitbit filed for an IPO, which is expected to raise $100 million. While filing, Fitbit stated their valuation as $300 million. As of now, Fitbit has 9.5 million paid subscribers, who receive services such as personalized trainer, bench mark analysis and more. It is not sure whether these services would be launched in India next month.
As per various estimates, more than 114 million wearable fitness gadgets will be sold by 2018, all over the world.
The entry of Fitbit in India, which is the global leader in selling wearable gadgets, will certainly create some ripples in this niche industry. However, the pricing of their products can prove to be a damper as the existing players such as Xiaomi and Micromax have already introduced cheaper and mini versions of their existing product line priced at Rs 999.
Goqii, the first Indian brand to introduce fitness tracker has products at that range (Rs 3999 – Rs 11,999), which can compete against Fitbit. Timex has also launched their new wearable gadgets priced at Rs 8995 and Rs 11,995.
It would be really interesting to observe the response which FitBit gets in India, considering the price sensitiveness among the users. With Apple Watch coming in, and Microsoft launching their fitness tracker called Band, the competition is certainly going to be intense.
Lycos has launched their wristband in India which has more features and us cheaper. Available at their website Lycos.life