It’s been a little over a year since Realme entered the smartphone market as an independent player and has made big strides with low-cost devices. The Telegraph caught up with Madhav Sheth, chief executive officer of Realme India to talk about C2 (upwards Rs 5,999; next sale is on June 28, noon), future products and the company’s offline plans.

Smartphone brands cannot ignore the offline market. What’s your take on it?

The offline market is very important for Realme because of two aspects. First, touch-and-feel is an important element for Indian consumers. Second, the offline market in India is 65-70 per cent, something that no brand can avoid. For Realme, it is very important to adjust to the offline market. The Indian market is completely different and how we categorise it is also different. This is our key focus market.

The initial response to C2?

It has been amazing. Whenever we go for a sale, it’s always sold out. We wanted to launch offline also because we believe that first-time smartphone users are important.

What makes the C2 stand out?

We never wanted to make a lot of sacrifices, yet have a sweet price point. It is not just about having some specs on paper, design is also very important. It is completely different from our flagship devices; we have customised it for C2. The diamond design is a unique selling proposition. We have also put in an octa-core processor and a dual-camera set up.

Do you have your competition in the crosshairs?

It is all about providing quality in way of specs and design. If you can get that right, it would be much easier to win the battle. We need more players and not just two or three. It is a 150 million handset market, which is huge and needs many players.

What’s your next product?

It will be an all-screen phone with a pop-up camera. The main aspect of the phone won’t be just the pop-up camera. How many times does a person use the selfie camera? A person like me use it once or twice a day. For us, it’s the full-view screen that would be important; it will be about providing an experience.

Besides phones, anything else coming up from Realme?

We are launching a range of accessories. Currently, there is only the Realme earbuds. But coming up is Bluetooth headsets, completely wireless solutions, powerbanks, chargers and much more. All this in the second half of the year.

You don’t spend too much on advertising....

Realme users are techies and people who understand the price-to-performance aspect. Our users first see the performance of a device and then see the price point. Thanks to word-of-mouth advertising, people are talking about the quality of our devices. Quality is our silent marketing proposition. People do compare a lot online. Ten-odd years ago we used to visit car showrooms for specs. Now when we visit the showroom, we know which car to buy as we have already done our research online. This aspect has also become very important in the mobile industry.