‘We Want to Change How Consumers View Chinese Brands'

“Whether we are in China or India or any other country, it is time to check our culture and strong belief that we can all come together and overcome this difficult situation.”

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When you work for ‘Godfather,’ you know how to survive. In fact, survival becomes a part of your DNA. In 2002, when Jerome Chen joined the army of Duan Yongping, the reclusive entrepreneur billed as Godfather of the Chinese smartphone industry, BBK Electronics was into the education electronics and audio-visual segment making VCD and DVD players. Chen was, early on, introduced to the heroic tale of survival of BBK Electronics, when it faced its first major financial crisis in 1997, just two years after the foundation of the fledgling venture. The company somehow survived.

Then, in 2012, BBK, now a feature phone maker, was staring at an existential crisis. The Chinese market had overnight shifted to smartphones, and the handsets made by BBK were not only redundant but twice as costly as their smart counterparts. The company again survived. “The crisis made the company stronger and much more mature,” contends Chen, who came to India in August 2014 to launch Vivo, the smartphone brand which, along with Oppo, OnePlus and Realme, traces its parentage to BBK. The gritty warrior is now confident of fighting the Covid-19 setback as well. “We will survive because of the culture of the company to overcome a crisis.”

The CEO of the five-year-old smartphone company marshalled his resources to topple South Korean giant Samsung during the last quarter of 2019 (October-December) to become second biggest in India. The bigger challenge, though, is neither survival nor becoming the biggest.

“We want to change the perception of us being a Chinese company to becoming a global company,” he says in an exclusive interview with Forbes India. Excerpts:

On becoming the biggest in India