Realme’s Madhav Sheth on resuming production, pre-installing Aarogya Setu, O2O solution

Speaking to indianexpress.com, Realme India head Madhav Sheth confirmed that the company has already received the required permissions from the Uttar Pradesh government to reopen their production facility in Greater Noida. “We are resuming our operations with 25 per cent of our production capacity, and are bringing back close to 2,000 employees at the facility,” Sheth noted.

To ensure the health and safety of the workforce, Sheth said Realme has arranged for transportation to bring back the outstation employees, and have also made accommodation provisions. “We will also ensure that the employees maintain distance at the workstations and common area, while working in plants with adequate safety measures and sanitisation,” he said.

Sheth said it will take around two to four weeks for the company to restore the production to normal. “We are conducting Covid-19 tests and workers proven negative only will be allowed to enter the factory.”

“We are conducting Covid-19 tests and workers proven negative only will be allowed to enter the factory” — Madhav Sheth

Realme O2O solution coming soon

To ensure consumers don’t face issues in purchasing Realme smartphones, the company will soon introduce its O2O solution in the country similar to Xiaomi, Vivo and Samsung. Sheth said the company is helping distribution partners across India fill the stocks at retail points and simultaneously also working on the O2O solution for the partners. Sheth, however, said “this will take some time as the business model is currently under works.”

Aarogya Setu app pre-installation

Some media reports suggest that the government of India is in talks with smartphone manufacturers to have Aarogya Setu app preinstalled in upcoming smartphones. Neither the government nor the brands have confirmed the information as of yet. Sheth, however, says that the brand has not received any guidelines from the government yet but if there are new advisories to have the app installed on phones the company “will follow it”.

Earlier this month Xiaomi India Managing Director Manu Jain confirmed to us that the Aarogya Setu contact tracing app will be pre-installed in phones if the government issues guidelines. Read for more details.

Safety measures

Smartphone companies have started delivering products in Green and Orange zones while Red zone is still restricted to essential deliveries only. Realme’s own e-retail platform realme.com has also started taking orders. Sheth said the company is ensuring strict social distancing precautions. “The delivery team is wearing masks and conduct frequent body temperature and report back. We are even maintaining social distancing for cash on delivery transactions,” he explained.