Indian consumer electronics company Intex is targeting a 20 per cent growth in its mobile accessories business.

“This business clocked revenues of ₹100 crore last fiscal and we are confident of growing in the 20-25 per cent range,” said Manish Gupta, Head-Mobile Accessories at Intex Technologies India.

Intex entered the mobile accessories vertical in 2011 and manufactures cellphone batteries, chargers, hands free, USB cables and power banks. The company has presence in business segments such as mobile handsets, consumer durables and IT accessories. In the 2016-17 fiscal, Intex had revenues of ₹4,300 crore.

While the majority of the business, estimated to be around 70 per cent comes from mobile handsets, the peripheral business is fast growing. In August, Intex sold three lakh power banks, according to Gupta.

The company believes that its accessories business can be a focal point of growth as customers look to buy wireless headphones or a car inverter charger, which can power a laptop as well as offer standard USB-based charging options. The company believes that in the rural parts of India, replacement batteries for feature phones is also a sizeable market.

Peripheral business Of the overall peripheral business, Intex gets 50 per cent of the revenues from North India, which includes Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Punjab and 20 per cent from the South. Intex manufactures mobile accessories from its plant in Baddi (Himachal Pradesh) and Noida.

Industry watchers point out that Intex is playing in a segment that is low margin but is almost a billion-dollar market. While there is no official data available regarding this market, the mobile accessories segment was estimated to be around $1 billion in 2014 and has been growing in the 20-25 per cent rate for the last couple of years.

“The margins in this business are in the range of 30-40 per cent, which is better than mobile phones, which on an average can be 10 per cent or so,” said Sanchit Vir Gogia, Founder Greyhound Research. Intex sells through online channels and physical stores and has around 500 distributors across the country.