A brand every distributor rejected (realme) scaled to 90+ countries and built a ₹40,000 crore brand.
Madhav Sheth picked up a chip his own company OPPO had thrown out, and did the one thing nobody else in the industry was doing. He worked backwards from the actual cost structure.
He knew that nearly 40% of every phone's price in offline retail goes into channel margins - distributor cuts, retailer cuts, promoter costs, foreign trip incentives. None of that touches the product. All of it touches the price.
So he skipped offline entirely, partnered directly with Flipkart, and passed that 40% straight back to the customer.
Same chip everyone rejected. Same specs OPPO would have sold for nearly double. Priced at a fraction of it.
80 out of 100 people he invited to the launch told him it would flop.
Day one, the phone sold out. That phone was Realme 1, and it became the foundation of a brand that, by his own account, scaled to 90+ countries and crossed a multi-billion dollar valuation in under 4 years.
Yeh asli lesson hai, sabko laga product reject hua tha. Asal mein, sirf ek soch reject hui thi jo sabne maan li thi ki sahi hai.
Sheth has since left Realme entirely. Today he runs a new brand - Ai+ Smartphone, an Indian-headquartered company where the software and data stay in India. In 8-9 months, by his own account, it did over ₹2,000 crore in revenue, selling 1.5-2 million handsets.
Most MSME owners keep selling the same "hero product" for years because it's safe, known, already working. But your next hero product is rarely sitting inside what you already sell. It's sitting in an experiment you haven't tried yet.
Naya try karo. Research karo, log se milo, product test karo. Kuch fail bhi honge, hone do. Jo laga tha sabse safe product hai, wahi shayad sabse bada risk ban jaaye agar aap kuch naya try hi na karo.
#OPPO #RealMe #AiSmartphone #VyapariToCEO #MSME #Entrepreneurship #IndianBusiness
Madhav Sheth picked up a chip his own company OPPO had thrown out, and did the one thing nobody else in the industry was doing. He worked backwards from the actual cost structure.
He knew that nearly 40% of every phone's price in offline retail goes into channel margins - distributor cuts, retailer cuts, promoter costs, foreign trip incentives. None of that touches the product. All of it touches the price.
So he skipped offline entirely, partnered directly with Flipkart, and passed that 40% straight back to the customer.
Same chip everyone rejected. Same specs OPPO would have sold for nearly double. Priced at a fraction of it.
80 out of 100 people he invited to the launch told him it would flop.
Day one, the phone sold out. That phone was Realme 1, and it became the foundation of a brand that, by his own account, scaled to 90+ countries and crossed a multi-billion dollar valuation in under 4 years.
Yeh asli lesson hai, sabko laga product reject hua tha. Asal mein, sirf ek soch reject hui thi jo sabne maan li thi ki sahi hai.
Sheth has since left Realme entirely. Today he runs a new brand - Ai+ Smartphone, an Indian-headquartered company where the software and data stay in India. In 8-9 months, by his own account, it did over ₹2,000 crore in revenue, selling 1.5-2 million handsets.
Most MSME owners keep selling the same "hero product" for years because it's safe, known, already working. But your next hero product is rarely sitting inside what you already sell. It's sitting in an experiment you haven't tried yet.
Naya try karo. Research karo, log se milo, product test karo. Kuch fail bhi honge, hone do. Jo laga tha sabse safe product hai, wahi shayad sabse bada risk ban jaaye agar aap kuch naya try hi na karo.
#OPPO #RealMe #AiSmartphone #VyapariToCEO #MSME #Entrepreneurship #IndianBusiness