Six months into the Indian market, Chinese technology and Internet company LeEco on Wednesday launched two new smartphones – Le 2 and Le Max2 – priced between ₹11,999 and ₹29,000. Registration of both models will open on June 20 on Flipkart, and flash sales will happen from June 28.

The company also launched LeMall, its website on which the company will sell products in future.

“We don’t believe that the higher you pay, the more valuable product you get,” said Brian Hui, Head of North America Operations and Senior Vice-President, LeMall International, LeEco.

In a conversation with BusinessLine after the launch of both models, he shared the company’s sale strategy in India and how he aims to be among the top three smartphone brands within a year. Excerpts:

There is aggressive competition in the Indian smartphone market. What will be your USP?

The Indian market has many brands selling smartphones. We have integrated the content and hardware experience into one.

It is not pre-loaded; rather content curation of devices. We use our cloud technology, Internet development process, and all the integration of hardware and software technologies into one, which many others don’t.

For example, in China, neither Samsung/Apple does it, nor does anyone here, except us.

What about the pricing strategy?

We don’t believe in ‘the higher you pay the more valuable product you get’, but the other way round. We give the best product at an affordable price, and then make money from our services. Our advertisers are willing to fund the hardware, and in return we will give disruptive pricing for our products.

How far can you come down on pricing? Can you offer a smartphone priced below ₹5,000?

Such pricing is possible for only feature phones. But, in terms of disruptive pricing, nobody can offer a smartphone at such a price. Having said that, we have offers in China where we give free handsets if a customer gets a content subscription for three years.

Can we see something similar here then?

Yes. Once we beef up our content business here, we would like to do the same thing. Customers may pay for services, and we will subsidise the hardware cost.

For India, we will be aggressive in terms of content acquisition – whether it is in sports, channels, movies or games. It will be similar to what we have in China apart from providing content from our collaborations, as we produc our own content.

But, how about regulations on providing or sourcing such content?

We have permission already, and have met the IT Minister as well. We don’t think we require permission for content that we plan here. We have tie-ups with Yupp TV for Live television channels and Eros Now for Levidi app. We also have premium content, since we have the streaming facility from cloud and the infrastructure we are creating is seamless. In addition, we have a partnership with Hungama that will come into effect within a couple of months.

Have you zeroed-in on plans for making your products in India?

We will not make phones here for the local market only, but for export as well. We have a concrete roadmap and are on the right track.

How many service centres do you have now, and what are your expansion plans?

Right now we have 555 service centres, and since we have started offline retailing, we will be adding more across India. As we announced earlier on Tuesday, we will start offline stores in Delhi and Mumbai and by September, we will add more – around 75-100 – in major cities and towns.

How many engineers do you plan to hire in your R&D centre in Bengaluru?

India will be one of the development centres for LeMall globally, so we will hire engineers here for China, the US and some countries we are planning to expand into.

We are planning to hire around 200 engineers in India this year.

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