Luminous enters handset market; to invest over Rs 550 crore by 2012

Luminous, the New Delhi-based power and energy storage company, announced its entry into the mobile phone market and said it will be investing over $25 million (about Rs 110 crore) this financial year and about $100 million (Rs 440 crore) in 2011-2012.
The company plans to roll out its handsets in May under a separate entity named Wynn Telecom. It will initially launch seven models of dual SIM handsets in the sub-Rs 5,000 price range and plans to be in the top three Indian handset brands within 12 months of launch.
Speaking to Telecom Yatra, Rakesh Malhotra, co founder and chairman, Wynn Telecom, said, “Our initial investment of $25 million will be for product, business and brand development. We are also setting up a manufacturing plant in Himachal Pradesh, which will require larger investment, thus we will be putting in $100 million in the next financial year.”
Wynn Telecom will offer a mix of utility phones, upgrade phones and youth phones. Utility phones will be a series of phones with heavy duty batteryand multiple language support. The upgrade series will have options such as cameras and video players. The youth series will consist of phones with features such as a QWERTY keypad, pre loaded internet messenger, social networking applications, multimedia etc.
On manufacturing capacity, Malhotra said, “We have set up a base in Shenzhen, China and this entity is staffed with design and quality people, who are working with some OEM (original equipment manufacturing) companies to manufacture handsets. We will continue with this till the third quarter of this year and after that manufacturing will begin in the Himachal Pradesh plant.”
The company has plans to build the brand very quickly and will undertake big campaigns. Malhotra highlighted that distribution and after sales service will be the biggest strengths of Wynncom and added, “There are brands that have been in the business for over two to three years and are still relying on third parties for after sales service, but we have set up a nationwide service network on our own as we believe that it is an important part of any business.”
Wynn Telecom is an extension of the SAR Group of Companies, which has Luminous as the flagship brand. Luminous Power Technologies delivers inverters, UPS, batteries and renewable energy products. It also has business interests in consumer appliances, information technology and networking solutions. Founded in 1988, Luminous markets its products in over 28 countries.