Karbonn aiming at Rs. 8,000 crore revenue in FY 2015

Domestic handset maker Karbonn aims to clock a revenue of Rs. 8,000 crores in 2014-15, growing close to 80 percent, as it expands its smartphone portfolio.

Karbonn, which is the country's third largest smartphone maker, expects to close the current fiscal with Rs. 4,500 crores in revenues.

"About 80 percent of our handsets sold are feature phones and the remaining are smartphones. We expect the ratio to change to 50-50 in the next fiscal," Karbonn Managing Director Pardeep Jain told PTI.

Smartphones account for 40 percent of Karbonn's revenues and that is expected to grow to 65 percent, he said.

Also, Karbonn plans to spend Rs. 300 crores on marketing and sales and about Rs. 400 crores on R&D during the next fiscal, Jain said, adding that the spend will focus on smartphones.

The company on Wednesday launched three new smartphones, based on the latest Android KitKat operating system and hexa and octa-core processors, in partnership with mobile chipmaker MediaTek.

The three phones - Titanium Hexa, Titanium Octane and Titanium Octane Plus - are priced at Rs. 16,990, Rs. 14,490 and Rs. 17,990, respectively. The devices will start shipping from the last week of April.

"We are the first Indian brand to offer KitKat OS to the Indian consumers. The smartphone market in India grew by nearly 229 percent in 2013 and the partnership with MediaTek will allow us to further consolidate our position in the domestic market," he said.

According to research firm IDC, smartphone sales surpassed 44 million units in 2013, up from 16.2 million in 2012.

This surge has been mainly powered by home grown vendors which have shown a tremendous and consistent growth over the past four quarters of 2013.

Samsung led the Indian smartphone market (37 percent), followed by Micromax (16 percent), Karbonn (10 percent) and Sony (5 percent) in the October-December 2013 period.

The overall phone market in India stood at close to 257 million units in 2013, an 18 percent increase from 218 million units in 2012, with a remarkable migration from feature phones to smartphones primarily due to the narrowing price gaps between the two product categories.