Oppo enters financial services space in India after Xiaomi, Realme
NEW DELHI: Chinese phone makers that have tasted blood with smartphones and partly with televisions are thirsting for more as they slowly expand its wings in the financial services space. After Xiaomi and Realme, BBK Electronics-owned Oppo on Monday has ventured into this segment with the launch of Oppo Kash, which will offer lending, saving, protection and payment services in the country.
"Payments is going to be a big focus for us this year as we are focusing on building a consumer centric service ecosystem. We see a huge opportunity for consumer lending considering our customers are mostly millennial and often they are in need of easy finance," said Sumit Walia, vice-president, product and marketing, Oppo India, adding that the aim is to get about one crore customers and assets under management of Rs 50,000 crore over the next five years.
The company has launched the beta version of the platform with five products and expect to have its payment product launched in the next 18 months after internal evaluation and relevant regulatory approvals.
The four products that will come out in the beta launch are personal loans up to two lakh, business loans up to two crore, free credit reports, and screen damage insurance. Additionally, it is also offering a product called Freedom SIP, where users can start mutual fund investments with just Rs100.
“Our team is piloting a physical acquisition model leveraging the smartphone sales team in about 60,000 sale points across the country to cross sell financial products. The pilot will run in select stores across the country for six months post which an all-India rollout will be done,” Walia further said.
According to experts, smartphone manufacturers will not limit themselves to just financial services and will be looking at more areas to build an entire ecosystem of services as it would play a key role in revenue generation as margins in hardware is going to be low.
“As average selling point (ASP) of smartphones goes up in India, OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) will leverage such services to offer flexibility to users,” said Tarun Pathak, associate director at Counterpoint Research.
Additionally, such services will also bring the much-needed stickiness for the brand. For starters, brand stickiness is when you set up your customer to return to your business because you create convenience. The company’s financial arm was launched alongside its new smartphone — Oppo Reno 3 Pro starting at price of Rs 29,990.