Recently, we had a chance to experience the pTron Force X11, which is a “Bluetooth calling fitness smartwatch”, which promises a few things and does them well. Headquartered in Hyderabad, pTron is known for inexpensive offerings that includes TWS, speakers, fitness bands and smartwatches. What’s making the company successfully swim in an overcrowded pool? Here’s what Ameen Khawaja, founder and CEO of pTron told us.
The smartwatch and True Wireless Stereo (TWS) segment is oversaturated. Why did Palred Technologies enter this segment?
We launched our first TWS Bassbuds in Sep 2019. We were the first brand to launch a TWS with BT5.0 and 20 hours total playtime under 1K. Within the first three days of launch, we sold a record 10K pieces of Bassbuds. Our flagship product in the TWS category, the Bassbuds became a massive success story that competed with the likes of TWS products offered by Xiaomi, Realme, BoAt, Noise and so on. It remained the number-one bestselling TWS on Amazon for a prolonged period before several other brands started venturing into the given price segment.
In the smartwatch category, we think there is still a lot of opportunities, especially in the price segment we cater in. pTron is known to provide products that pack features and function along with affordability. Our mission is to make tech affordable and accessible to all. Better pricing as compared to the features is what we promise. To achieve this we directly work with chipset companies than the OEMs, which helps us gain better control of pricing as compared to features.
What are the new products you are looking at and what’s the rollout plan?
Every quarter we are launching two-three new models in various categories either in a specific price range, design, or basis the target audience (gender-specific). In six months we are planning to extensively Make in India and grow our Make in India catalogue.
For something like Force X11 to work, one has to download the app DaFit. It’s another app, users need to download, something many may not want to do….
We are already working on this and considering vendors locally to develop our app.
What kind of partnerships is pTron looking at?
For the next two-three years our focus is to expand offline. We will be working more with LFR partners. We are working with Reliance and CROMA now. For general trade, we are working with Udaan and planning to scale up on more such B2B e-commerce platforms.
What does pTron mean? And what are your plans beyond India?
pTron is the acronym for Premium Electronics. We are working with the Amazon Middle East team and shall soon start selling on amazon.ae.
