It all started in 1974, when LP Narayana Reddy’s partnered with his friends to establish a music shop named Sangeetha in Bangalore, selling Gramophone records. During 1981, when the television wave hit India, L Subhash Chandra joined Sangeetha and today he drives the Rs 500 crore enterprise that is constantly growing. Speaking to Vyas Sivanand, Subhash Chandra who is the Managing Director of Sangeetha Mobiles Private Limited, talks about the growth of the enterprise and their innovative schemes.
Tell us about the journey of Sangeetha from selling Gramophone records to becoming the top retailer of mobiles?
We started by dealing with Gramophones. Then we expanded in home appliances, TV sets, computers, etc but in 1999 we decided to do away with everything else and focus only on handsets. Sangeetha has been the pioneer & leader throughout and was the first retail chain to offer Insurance, EMI & Exchange Offers, doorstep service & exclusive Android based applications.
Presently, we are in an ocean of mobile phones, but when we started in dealing with mobile phones, things were quite different and difficult. In 1996, when the mobile market opened in Karnataka, the entire focus used to be on selling Sim cards only where there was a meaty margin. It was difficult to sell a mobile handset in those days as mobile companies had not setup their offices anywhere in India.
If we tried to obtain a mobile with the bill, we were required to send an advance demand draft and wait for a week or 10 days to get the delivery. Subsequent to this, no one was interested to follow this route. We took the risk and started to provide a mobile with a bill and guarantee. Big companies which required the bill had to turn to Sangeetha.
In the backdrop of the ruling grey market, slowly and steadily, we built a reputation of providing handsets with the bill and a guarantee. Naturally companies also started to turn to us. We built a strong brand with the customer and the manufacturer and our brand started to become stronger.
When did you start branching out?
In 2002, we started our expansion activity. The first step was the Hutch shop, who had established their first setup in Bangalore. We became their franchisee and thus began our branching activity. Today we have around 150 showrooms in Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. We have 50-plus showrooms in Bangalore.
What are the innovative offers from Sangeetha?
Presently we have few unique offers for the customer which probably no one else in the country is offering. We have Sangeetha Swift, which is an insurance scheme for the customer. There may be few others offering the same, but the difference with Sangeetha is that we offer a single window for redressal. The customer gets a new handset replacement within seven working days from the date of claim. This is unique to Sangeetha as others offer a replacement in 90 days.
Another unique feature which we started about four months back is Sangeetha Delight. If there is any trouble with the handset, our delight team collects the handset from the customer’s place, provides a standby phone , takes the handset to the service center, fixes the fault and gets it back to the customer’s place, unlimited times in a year, for a very nominal fee of Rs 99.
Our anniversary sale is huge draw which is organised on our birthday, May 31st and goes on till June 31st. It is the most awaited event in mobile retailing space in the south. We triple our sale and the customers get a basket of goodies. All mobiles are sold at Rs 1 margin and every customer gets an assured gift on the spot.
This Anniversary we have Bikes, Bose audio systems, F1 Race tickets, Microwaves and whole lot of gifts. Apart from this the customer gets the benefit of EMIs, zero down payment, zero processing fees and 100 per cent cash back, etc.
We strongly believe in CARE (Customers Are Really Everything) and have a strong customer base of around 2 million happy customers. We are not in telecom business serving people. We are in people business giving Telecom solutions.
What are your expansion plans?
We have come so far purely through our monetary strength. We would be expanding beyond south India and would also take the franchising route to achieve at least 250 stores by March 2013.
What have been your main achievements?
We won the ET Retail award for excellence in customer service in 2011 beating other retail giants competing in this category. We have also figured as one of the top 28 trailblazers of Bangalore.