You can’t have a discussion about smartphones without mentioning Carl Pei. The Chinese-Swedish entrepreneur, who is the founder of OnePlus, started Nothing, a technology company in 2020.
Storyboard18’s Shibani Gharat had a chance to catch up with Pei at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. She posed a question on what it takes to launch two smartphone brands in a span of a decade in a rapidly evolving tech space. Pei answered, “Naivety!”
He adds, “Nothing is a lot harder because we are not a part of the bigger company. We have to think about everything, right from supply chain to human resources etc. ‘Don’t do it!’ is my advice to other people—who want to start a tech brand–because it is very complicated. In our business, you have to do supply chain, and engineering on the hardware as well as the software side.”
Nothing’s founder also mentioned that apart from supply chain and engineering, this also included looking into marketing, design, customer service, and sales etc.
“What it actually takes is not a great idea. Rather, all the functions I just talked about need to work together. It is their integration which takes to make a great idea work,” explains Pei.
India is the largest smartphone market in the world. Speaking on his assessment of it, Pei is quick to add that he is very bullish on India and its economy. He says, “This year, it is going to grow by six percent. Large parts of the world are going to fall into recession. India’s population is very young. So, they can contribute to building the country and the economy.”
During his recent trip to India, Pei had an opportunity to meet the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi. “In that meeting, we were the only startup company amongst a group of established companies. India is going to be an important market for us. A lot of our manufacturing is done in India.” Pei said.
Watch here.