Designing a Smartphone for Indian masses

Case Background

Established in 2009, Lava International has established itself as the leading Indian player in the Mobile
handsets industry. With the vision to ‘Empower people to do more, to be more’ the company has
ambitions to build a global Indian brand in this category. Focused on empowering customers at the
bottom of the pyramid Lava constantly strives to make valuable technologies accessible to these
consumers. Lava has operations in 20 other countries apart from India and is 5th largest brand in
Feature Phones globally.

In the year 2012 Lava set up a 700 member R&D team in China for Feature Phones & Smartphones
and built many products from the scratch. In 2017 the Feature Phone R&D was shifted to India and
the first fully Designed in India Feature Phone was thus launched for Indian market, followed by
designing entire Feature Phones portfolio in India. As a result, in a span of just 2 years, Lava increased
its Feature Phone market share from 5% to 18%.

Recently Lava began working on the first Design in India Smartphone for entry level customers to be
launched soon. Over the next couple of years the company has plans to design the entire smartphone
portfolio within India. In order to have a complete end to end control on Product value chain Lava has
already set up a large manufacturing facility in India with a monthly capacity of 3 million phones. A
large part of supply chain is also now managed out of India with a strong focus on component
localisation.

Innovation is at the core of Lava’s philosophy for empowering its consumers, and Design in India
initiative is the key to that philosophy. India’s first payment solution on Feature phones was developed
by our own India Design Team, thanks to our design team’s efforts which has made this life changing
application possible, thereby solving a very important consumer problem.

For another smartphone model, the Product Team shared a brief with design team for designing a
unique proposition for customers in the Rs.6000-8000 price segment.

The detailing of competition in this segment is provided in Appendix which is additional data for the
case study.

The Challenge
Design a differentiated smartphone in the Rs.6000-8000 price segment.

The solution should consist of the following

1. Problem Identification –Identify the problem or the set of problems which Lava should focus
upon solving. This could be based upon the appendix present at the end, or more research
can also be conducted by the participants regarding the competition and the consumer. That
can be utilized to identify the problem or even arrive at its solution (Please add details of
additional research if any).
2. Recommendation - Best possible solution/recommendation to alleviate the problem. A
detailed recommendation with the below mentioned specifics would be highly appreciated
3. Round 1 Deliverables
a. Presentation not more than 5 slides with recommendations regarding the
smartphone covering below pointers
i. Detailing of the technology to be deployed in hardware or software, to
achieve the solution
 ii. Detailing of smartphone in terms of Industrial Design (Looks), Mechanical
Design, Hardware Design (PCBA components), along with the software
applications used to develop those
iii. Focus should be on differentiators in hardware and software as compared to
competition in the segment
iv. More than specs, solution offered to customers in terms of hardware and
software technologies, will be key criteria for evaluation
v. Kindly include all your files, including the final recommendation, images,
videos or anything you would want the jury to consider in a zipped folder and
follow the naming convention – <TEAM NAME>_<TEAM LEADER NAME> and
send it to designinindia@lavainternational.in
vi. The decision of LAVA’s evaluation team is final.

Note: It is understood and agreed by the Applicant that all ideas, drawings, design, pictures,
prototypes and any other material created, submitted or designed by the Applicant shall be the sole
property of the Company/Lava (collectively called “Designing Material”), including all intellectual
property rights related thereto (“Intellectual Property and Ownership Rights”). The Company/Lava
shall have the sole and absolute right to enjoy, exploit or otherwise use the Designing Material and
the related Intellectual Property and Ownership Rights to the exclusion of all others, including the
Applicant.

Appendix

Here are some details to help you understand the market better.

1. The below table contains import data for the top 5 competition brands in the 6k-8k segment
for the last 8 quarters

Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1
Company 2018 2018 2018 2019 2019 2019 2019 2020
XIAOMI 4.24 M 2.10 M 3.12 M 2.47 M 1.75 M 2.79 M 2.34 M 1.77 M
REALME - 222 k 552 k 282 k 1.10 M 710 k 68 k 996 k
SAMSUNG 2.76 M 4.55 M 2.05 M 2.13 M 2.45 M 2.20 M 988 k 491 k
TECNO 473 k 351 k 60 k 301 k 277 k 510 k 156 k 385 k
INFINIX - 50 k - - - 200 k 343 k 285 k

M- Millions k – Thousands

2. We’ve also listed below some of the leading competition models in the price range. This is for
your reference and this is not an exhaustive list.

Brand Model
Xiaomi Redmi 8A 3GB 32GB
Realme Realme C3 3GB 32GB
Xiaomi Redmi 8A 2GB 32GB
Realme Narzo 10A
Oppo A1K
Infinix Hot 8
Xiaomi Redmi 8A Dual 2GB 32GB
Tecno Spark Go Plus
Tecno Spark 5
Realme Realme C2 2GB 32GB
Samsung Galaxy J2 Core 2020
Vivo Y91
Realme C11

3. Cost will be 80% of price, cost data is given as reference purpose for case study only

Screen 5 5.5 6 6.5

Cost of Different Screen Sizes 500 700 900 1100
ROM GB 8 16 32 64
Cost of Different ROM options 500 800 1100 1400
RAM GB 1 2 3 4
Cost of Different RAM options 500 800 1100 1400
Battery mAH 3000 4000 5000 6000
Cost of Different Battery options 400 500 600 700
Rear Camera 5 8 13+2 16+5
Cost of Different Rear Camera
options 400 500 700 900
Front Camera 2 5 8 13
Cost of Different Front Camera
Options 400 500 600 700
CPU Ghz 1 1.5 2 2.5
Cost of Different CPU options 500 600 700 800
Other Components
Cost of other components 1000 1000 1000 1000