Mobile Magic India Pvt Ltd. has drawn up plans to widen its retail chain of mobile shops across India. The company has plans of opening 200 retail stores by March 2007 in Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Karnataka, Haryana, Tamil Nadu, Jharkhand, Gujarat, and Rajasthan. This figure is expected to go up to 500 in 2008.
Mobile Magic currently operates 60 retail outlets in four states — Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh and Gujarat. The chain sells around 5.25 lakh handsets in these states. The company’s strategy involves focus on tier II and tier III cities to cater to the large customer base present there, before moving on to tier 1 cities.
While Mobile Magic is planning an initial public offer (IPO) issue by 2009, they want to be present in 3,400 towns by 2010.
The key focus of the company is on the technology and services related to mobile phones, rather than on handset sales — Mobile Magic claims to be the only retail chain to retail mobile phone application downloads. The company has also started MMIT (Mobile Magic Institute of Technology) — an in-house training centre based out of Nagpur, where it trains engineers who can offer services and a complete testing facility for manufacturers/operators to test their products before launch. These engineers are absorbed by Mobile Magic in their showrooms across the country.
