New Delhi, Oct 15 (IANS): Smartphone maker OnePlus is committed to invest Rs 100 crore towards deeper market penetration by taking premium offline experience beyond metro cities and expanding its reach through new online and offline retail partnerships, a top company executive said on Thursday.
With over 5,000 offline stores including partnered stores across the country, the smartphone maker is planning to scale up to more than 8,000 stores in the coming quarters, Navnit Nakra, VP and Chief Strategy OnePlus India told IANS.
"At present, we have over 30 OnePlus experience stores across India and will be opening 14 new experience stores in the next six months.
"We'll launch our biggest experience store globally, the OnePlus Nizam Palace in Hyderabad later this year. We are also working towards covering 100 cities through our service centre network in the next year," Nakra informed.
The smartphone maker launched its India R&D centre in 2019 and is committed to achieve long-term growth in the country.
Currently, the company has 300 employees in the R&D team and hope to double that number in the coming months.
Nakra said that India continues to be a key market for OnePlus since the brand's entry in 2014.
"We began our commitment to Make in India initiative in February 2018 and since then, we have been manufacturing our devices in the country. We have also commenced the manufacturing of the OnePlus TVs and OnePlus Nord in India," Nakra told IANS.
By 2021, all OnePlus TVs will be manufactured locally in India.
"On our smart TV portfolio, we commenced the manufacturing of the Y series in India and by 2021, all OnePlus TVs will also be manufactured locally including the Q and the U series," Nakra informed.
He said that 100 per cent of OnePlus smartphones are being manufactured in India including OnePlus 8 series, OnePlus Nord and the recently launched OnePlus 8T.
OnePlus has launched its new flagship 5G smartphone the 'OnePlus 8T' with 120Hz Fluid AMOLED display and quad-camera set up, in India.
The OnePlus 8T will be available in two colours, aquamarine green and lunar silver at Rs 45,999 (12GB RAM+ 256GB internal storage) and Rs 42,999 (8GB RAM+128GB internal storage).
"OnePlus is consistently exploring opportunities to fuel its growth and meet the needs of more users, by starting to strategically diversify into new product categories and new price points but, at the same time, not compromising on our OnePlus promise," Nakra told IANS.
OnePlus Nord series is also likely to get new entrants this month, according to multiple reports.
The rumoured OnePlus Nord N10 5G and OnePlus Nord N100 are said to be launching as soon as the end of October, first in the US market.