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Former actor Asin’s husband, Rahul Sharma, once synonymous with India’s disruptive mobile phone brand Micromax, could not compete with incoming competition from Chinese players. Micromax was once among the market leaders, but was soon overtaken by competitors to the point of becoming obsolete. However, this wasn’t the end of Rahul’s entrepreneurial journey. In a recent interview, he said that he is making more money than he ever has in his new venture, but most people aren’t aware of it.
Appearing on Nikhil Kamath’s podcast, Rahul recalled his initial days in the mobile phone business, and how rapidly Micromax grew. He also discussed being undercut by Chinese competitors, and expressed regret at not accepting funding of Rs 6500 crore in 2014. He said that the money would have helped when the market became more competitive. The death knell for Micromax was the pandemic, but despite taking the hit, Rahul had a resurgence. After having 50% of the market share pre-pandemic, Indian brands were completely ‘decimated’, he said.
He told Kamath, “In 2020, as a brand, we said, ‘No more’.” Asked what lessons he learned from the setback, Rahul said, “Today, our revenue is way bigger than what we used to do in our brand. Most people would probably not know. But we are doing way better than what we used to do earlier. In between, you try multiple things. What worked for us was sticking to our core. My core was to remain with tech.”
Rahul said that he didn’t pivot to the real estate market after his company crumbled. “The factories we’d created for Micromax were already there. Why don’t we build on that, and start (manufacturing) for others? That’s what we started doing. During Micromax, we had one or two factories. Now, we have four, and we’ve just set up our fifth.” Asked if he’s ‘stronger’ the second time around, he said that he his appetite for risk-taking has decreased, and that he recently had to remind himself to stick to the basics.
In the same interview, Rahul recalled turning down funding that would’ve potentially helped his business fend off competition. “When Meizu was raising a round with Alibaba, we were deep down with them at that time. This was in 2014. We were raising around $800 million (Rs 6,700 crore by 2025 conversion rates). The business was throwing so much of cash, we said, ‘We don’t need money’. We didn’t take that money, we were like, ‘We’re doing quite well, and we already have so much of…’” he said.
Asin and Rahul tied the knot in 2016, after being introduced to each other by Akshay Kumar. According to a Business World story from earlier this year, Rahul’s Bhagwati Products Ltd (BPL) secured crucial funding from foreign investors, resulting in a tenfold increase in revenue. His manufacturing company’s turnover stood at Rs 6200 crore.
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