By Anuj Sharma

New Delhi, Nov 14 (IANS): The Indian mobile accessories market is set to explode owing to the exponential smartphone sales growth and domestic phone maker Intex aims to touch the Rs 100 crore mark in this segment by March 2017 while gearing up to play a key role in the batteries segment, a top company executive has said.

The global mobile phone accessories market is expected to reach $107.3 billion by 2022, according to alliedmarketresearch.com. The major factor that boosts market growth is the increase in adoption of smartphones in urban as well as rural areas.

Industry experts peg the Indian mobile accessories segment at $1 billion, which is set to grow 20-25 per cent year-on-year.

Intex entered the mobile accessories vertical in 2011 and, since then, has been growing rapidly by developing and designing products ranging from batteries, chargers, hands-free devices, cables and power banks, among others.

"Battery is the backbone of the mobile phone industry and since day one, our focus was on battery. Our major share -- almost 50-55 per cent -- comes from batteries," Manish Gupta, Deputy General Manager, Mobile Accessories, at Intex Technologies (India), told IANS.

Intex also sells batteries for other Indian brands like Micromax, Lava and Karbonn and even for Nokia, Samsung and some Chinese brands.

"Every month, we sell half-a-million batteries for the mobile accessories business in the general trade market. We have a capacity of more than that and, gradually, we are increasing the capacity. We are also planning to make power banks in-house," Gupta noted.

The company reported Rs 670 million in revenue in the financial year 2015-16 -- up from an average growth rate of 90 per cent year-on-year. The significant accessories sale is via batteries and chargers -- 70 per cent of the business value originates in this category.

Intex's growth came from new products, including power banks and accessories such as USB cables, Gupta said, adding that for the mobile accessory as a whole division, the revenue sat at 25 per cent with standard growth rate of 20-25 per cent.

"Northern region is a major contributor to our business. Almost 50 per cent of business comes from the northern region. Southern region will be major focus for us in the next financial year," Gupta told IANS.

Intex is also aiming to launch a separate a smartphone accessory section wherein they already have one product -- MFI cable for iPhones. The company has taken a licence from the Cupertino, San Francisco-based Apple to launch the cable which is available online as well as in retail stores.

According to Gupta, power banks is another big growth area. In the last financial year, Intex sold 130,000 power banks and have already sold 750,000 power banks this year.

"Diwali was excellent for us. At ‘Flipkart Big Billion Day', we sold 100,000 power banks. With ‘Snapdeal Unbox', we sold 25,000 power banks and in general trade, we sold 15,000-16,000 power banks," Gupta said.

"That is almost 34 per cent share in the power banks segment we garnered this festive season. We were number one in the ‘Flipkart Big Billion Day'," Gupta added.

The company sold 400,000 units of power banks in the months of September and October alone. The sale of power banks has gone up by more than 100 per cent as compared to the same time last year.

"There are almost 1,000 channel partners with us for accessories business pan-India," the executive said.

The company will soon launch another innovative product -- "power inverter" -- that can charge laptops and two devices simultaneously. The product will be available in the market before March 2017.