OPPO has received approval by the Indian government to set up its single-brand retail stores in the country. The Chinese smartphone maker will now be able to sell directly to consumers in India.
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The Foreign Investment Promotion Board approved Oppo Mobiles India Pvt Ltd’s request. India allows foreign firms to sell directly to consumers through the so-called ‘single-brand retail’ route, but companies need to source 30 percent of the products locally. India moved to partially relax those conditions in 2016, exempting foreign retailers for three years from the 30 percent local sourcing rule in a bid to attract more investment. The government allowed 100 per cent foreign direct investment (FDI) through approval route for trading, including through e-commerce, in respect of food products manufactured and produced in India.
Sky Li, Global VP and President, OPPO India said in a statement,
We welcome the government’s decision, which is in line with our commitment to providing good quality camera phones to the young Indian users and we strongly aim to bring the best of camera, especially selfie experience to the Indian users. India has become the most important market for OPPO besides its domestic market and we have always focused on being present across all touchpoints to offer the best services to our consumers, which has led us to be the Selfie Expert and Leader in the market. We have offline stores across the country to provide our consumers better services in the process of purchase and with this development, we will continue to enhance the offline presence to connect with more and more consumers.
While we cannot divulge the investment and the number of OPPO showrooms under SBRT at this stage, to provide better service to our Indian consumers we closely work with our distribution and retail partners, we are aiming at building 550 service centres by the end of 2017 to cover all regions among India, so that all our consumers experience more efficient and better services. Now we have opened more than 200 OPPO Showrooms.
Smartphone makers like Apple and Xiaomi have been trying to get an approval for single brand retail in India since last year. The other FDI proposals approved by the government include Chumbak Design ($8.62 million), Daniel Wellington AB ($10 million) and Actoserba Active Wholesale Pvt. Ltd. Actoserba Active Wholesale’s application was made for single brand retail trading (SBRT) of Zivame brand in addition to existing business of wholesale.