LeEco Too Applies For Opening Own Retail Stores; Partners with Offline Retail Chains for Increasing Reach

The Government recently relaxed the local sourcing norms to attract foreign companies to open their own retail outlets in India, with some terms and conditions. Apple, being the frontrunner, has already detailed out its plans to open Apple stores in India very soon.

LeEco, the Chinese technology giant, has filed a fresh application to the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) for opening its own stores in India. We think LeEco can definitely be successful with the plan as it also soon plans to open its own R&D centre and a manufacturing plant in the country.

LeEco launched the Le2 and Le Max2 in India around two months back and has sold more than 7 Lakh devices in India, all through the power of the internet and e-commerce. The company hasn’t even ventured into the offline sector, and all these devices have been sold through flash sales.

As the demand for LeEco phones is increasing in India, the company also plans to start sell these phones through major retail chains. LeEco is also hoping to get the FIPB approval within a month and open 5-10 stores in India by the end of 2016. We know FIPB is very particular about these applications, so LeEco has started planning for the same already.

“We have made a revised application to FIPB seeking exemption from local sourcing under the cutting-edge and state-of-the-art technology domain. We have already given details about our technology prowess and hope to receive the approval soon,” said Atul Jain, COO of Smart Electronics at LeEco.

Company’s move to increase offline presence

While LeEco has plans to open around 500 franchises throughout the country to sell all of its products, the company has just tied up with six retail chains in India to increase its smartphone presence in the offline space.

“This marks another milestone in our India journey that has been incredible so far. Our strategy to strengthen our offline business is a testimony to our commitment to the Indian market. For this, we have tied up with some of the well-known names in offline retail across geographies and we will continue to add more partners as we go along,” Jain said.

LeEco has tied up with Sangeetha Mobiles, Poorvika Mobiles, Shivalik, AppsYouNeed, Pearl Infotech and PCH to increase its offline presence. Whereas the Franchise stores will be solely responsible for just LeEco products and sales in India.

With these six retail chains, the company has already expanded to 2000 stores in six cities. Offline route is one of the alternatives to the online routes that is able to access that part of India which still doesn’t have access to internet and e-commerce.

First Apple, now LeEco and possibly Xiaomi will be opening its stores in India soon, as these companies battle for smartphones sales in the respective categories. I wonder if we’ll see fancy stores like those in the US and China with state-of-the-art facilities, or simple plain jane ones we have been seeing with the franchises.

Source: ET