The ensuing lockdown and tough competition from online sales during the pandemic had no damaging impact on the Indian offline smartphone MBOs (multi-brand outlets), revealed a report by analytics firm PredictiVu.

Acting as influencers and guiding smartphone buying sentiments of consumers, offline retail emerged as the biggest sales channel in India contributing more than half of all smartphone sales despite the unprecedented pandemic-triggered online boom, said the study titled, MBO Smartphone India Overview Report 2021.

The report based on an analysis of data collected from around 5k MBO retailers from top 50 cities in India integrated into their AI-powered visualization tool – DMO, reflects interesting insights and trends of the growing offline retail MBO segment for smartphone brands.

It says that strong consumer trust and constructive steps taken by the 3 key pillars of the industry – Retailers, Smartphone Brands and the Government – will continue to fortify the intrinsic strength of MBOs in the upcoming quarters.

Regardless of the pandemic crisis, lockdowns, and increasing competition from e-com giants, MBOs including the small and regional players, will continue to flourish, as per the report.

Kunal Sarkar, Vice President, PredictiVu, said, “Offline retail MBOs will significantly drive smartphone growth prospects in the coming quarters. It’s interesting to note under PredictiVu’s analysis that within the top 50 Indian cities that accounted for 60% of smartphone sales, MBOs claimed 45% of the total sales. The pandemic-led challenges have not mellowed down MBOs prominence in the consumer mind but instead have driven growth due to the unique nature of benefits they have offered. This influencer community is a key component in the marketing strategy and brand war of top smartphone brands that plan to expand brand reach and penetrate deeper into cities and towns now.”

Rajesh Kurup, who is on the strategic advisory board of PredictiVu, said, “Deriving near real-time analytics for a dynamic market like the offline smartphone MBO segment that holds immense potential for a brand’s success needed firstly holistic understanding and secondly, appropriate integration of diverse inputs right from consumers, ad-spends, retail and social listening. This report prepared with the insight from PredictiVu’s dashboard, that excellently embodies all of the above, will definitely allow smartphone brand marketers to monitor and manage marketing interventions better both at an enterprise and specific segment level.”