Of exclusive deals and dire straits

Exclusive smartphone deals for e-commerce firms have become a crucial strategy. To increase sales, and to block competitors. But at what cost?

Online channels accounted for 31% of the total smartphone sales in Q3, 2016 in India

Cumulatively, exclusive deals generated about half of the smartphone revenues for e-commerce firms.

Exclusive deals primarily involve negotiations on margins and marketing budget.

The ultimate key to negotiation will be which party has more leverage

When Motorola came to India with the first generation Moto G in late 2013, almost a year after exiting the country, not a single distributor wanted to take a bet on the brand. A team that was being managed from the Motorola London office had reached out to all the big offline channel partners, only to be rejected. Even Google, which had acquired Motorola in 2012, could not lend the estranged smartphone brand some credibility.

AUTHOR

Moulishree Srivastava

Moulishree has over five years of experience in journalism. In her previous assignment, she was a Principal Correspondent for Business Standard where she wrote on technology and telecom. Prior to Business Standard, she was at Mint, where she wrote on various subjects — tourism, hospitality, real estate, science, cyber security and technology. Moulishree graduated as an engineer in Information Technology from Chandigarh Engineering College. She worked as a software engineer briefly but then took a detour and got her journalism degree from IIJNM, Bangalore. She will be based in Bangalore and you can reach her at her [email protected]

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