Hyderabad: India is a booming electronics consumer market and is dominated by international brands and Chinese white label accessories. There was a dearth of Indian companies making these products suiting the domestic charging infrastructure. To fill this gap, husband-wife duo, Viswanadh Kandula and Midhula Devabhaktuni, moved back to India from the US, to embark on their entrepreneurial journey by starting their company Seminole Electronics established in Hyderabad and created their brand Mivi.Incorporated in October 2015, Seminole’s Mivi is an e-commerce, electronic gadgets brand that offers a range of products including headphones, Bluetooth earphones, power banks, cables, chargers, custom and designer cases, tempered glass etc. Seminole came out with its first product after six months of research and development in the form of a car charger during April 2016. The company is bringing a series of products that are curated for the Indian market.
Mivi was launched with a goal to fulfill the need of high-quality electronic gadgets at affordable prices for the Indian market. The brand realised that when it comes to buying electronics and mobile accessories, Indian customers get only two options – either to buy a low priced cheap quality product sourced and rebranded from China or to buy an expensive product from international brands. Mivi filled this gap by developing products that meet international quality standards at an affordable price.
Seminole built its design team in Hyderabad and started rolling out products. The company has come out with multiple products in the charger category and has rolled out Bluetooth earphones and headphones. A new earphone will be rolled out next week. The products are currently manufactured in South Korea and China. And by the third quarter of 2018, the company plans to set up its own production facility in Hyderabad that will make all these products here.
Viswanadh Kandula, co-founder, Seminole Electronics, told Telangana Today, “We were noticing that people were using high-end laptops and smartphones but they were using low-quality electronic accessories in turn affecting the life of high-valued products. We wanted to address this challenge. Our products are BIS certified and Qualcomm integrated circuit. We are also exploring wearable products such as fitness bands, which is in R&D stage now.”
Midhula Devabhaktuni, co-founder, Seminole said, “We have invested over Rs 5 crore in our operations. We have built a 45-member team. Through our own site and market places we are seeing demand from cities such as Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Delhi besides other metros. We are constantly putting efforts in R&D to come out with new products to cater to increasing demand and unmet needs.”
“If we keep innovating products, we will create our own niche. We are not impacted by competition. We are keeping up the customer trends and designing products accordingly,” she adds.
Mivi aims to become the go-to brand for good quality electronic gadgets, backed by long warranty and reliable customer service. With its unique and exquisite designs, the brand targets people between the age group of 17 to 40, interested in online shopping, electronics and gadgets. Today, in the online space, Mivi sees large orders in cables and charger category and aims to tap the audio category in the coming months. It is able to bring the earphones at one-fourth to one-fifth of what international brands are offering.
Though initially it launched the charging category (all kinds of chargers and cables for mobile devices), Mivi is now foraying into the audio category with earphones (Thunder Beats), headphones (SAXO) etc. The products are also made available on various e-commerce marketplaces such as Amazon, Flipkart, PayTm, besides its own company website www.mivi.in.
Mivi plans to enter the offline space in 2019. The focus will be on foraying into tier-1 and tier-2 cities in the country. These will not be standalone stores, but the products will be sold in stores that sell mobile phones and accessories, Midhula added.
The company that has received investor interest finds itself self-sufficient. “We are not limited by money to grow. We have very specific goals to be met. We don’t want to be driven by profits at this stage. We want to focus on customer satisfaction,” she signs off.
source:-telanganatoday.
