Oppo, Realme and OnePlus to have separate sales operations, ET Retail

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China’s largest smartphone manufacturer BBK Group, which was using Oppo Mobiles India as the sales and distribution company for three brands such as Oppo, Realme and OnePlus, is breaking this sales structure to de-risk the business which is under increased government scrutiny.

The plan is to let individual brands have its own sales and marketing team so that all brands are not clubbed together in case of further government action.

Realme Mobile Telecommunications (India) has started wholesale sales of Realme smartphones and other tech products through this entity, as per the company’s latest regulatory filings to the Registrar of Companies (RoC) sourced from business intelligence platform Tofler.

The filings show there has been a change in nature of the business of this entity -Realme Mobile Telecommunications (India) is now the Realme brand licensee from Realme Chongqing Mobile Telecommunications Corp and will now manage wholesale, marketing, distribution, after sales service, and other incidental activities of the brand.

While OnePlus’ latest filings shows it is yet to implement such a structure using OnePlus Technology India, which continues to be an entity which does marketing, brand promotion, professional and technical business services, industry executives said, but the scope of operation of this entity too will be expanded to include sales and distribution.

Emails sent to Realme and OnePlus remained unanswered till Thursday press time.

Till now, the sales and after-sales service revenue of Oppo, Realme and OnePlus were together accounted for in the books of Oppo Mobiles India that clocked sales of ₹51,994 crore in 2022-23 as per RoC filings. BBK Group also owns Vivo and iQOO brands and operates the sales of these two in India through Vivo Mobile India which made sales of ₹29,875 crore in FY23.

This made BBK Group the country’s largest smartphone group with combined revenue of all these brands at ₹81,870 crore in FY23 ahead of South Korean rival Samsung’s mobile phone business in India of ₹70,292 crore and Apple India’s ₹49,321 crore, as per RoC filings.

ET has earlier reported BBK Group has been undertaking a lot of changes in its India business to derisk the operations and to toe the line which the government authorities have asked the Chinese companies to undertake in informal meetings.