Samsung Electronics is targeting repeat purchases from its 175 million customers in India through a new cashback credit card, a senior executive said, in a move to boost sales in a critical market where it was once the top smartphone seller.
As the festive season kicks off in India, the South Korean electronics giant on Monday launched a new credit card with India’s Axis Bank to offer 10 percent cashback throughout the year to customers buying Samsung products.
Usually, such discount offers are only available during festive seasons or sales on e-commerce websites like Amazon and other brick-and-mortar stores.
“We are talking about 175 million existing customers, which is our current installed base for Samsung in India. This entire base is a potential one,” Raju Pulan, senior vice president of Samsung’s mobile business in India, told Reuters.
Samsung, which claims to be India’s largest consumer electronics company, sells everything from smartphones to washing machines in the country. But nearly 72 percent of India’s total revenue of $9.3 billion in 2020-21 came from smartphones.
Samsung’s move to offer cashback to customers through its new card partnership comes after it lost smartphone market share to Chinese rivals such as Xiaomi, Oppo and Vivo, which offer a range of budget smartphones in the world’s second-largest mobile market.
Samsung had a 26 percent share of India’s smartphone market in the second quarter of 2020, up from 19 percent currently, data from Counterpoint Research shows.
Counterpoint analyst Tarun Pathak said, “Samsung is getting aggressive on financing things. Financing plays an important role in helping people make smartphone purchase decisions.”
© Thomson Reuters 2022
