Qarmatek began as a B2B electronics repair and refurbishment partner for major device manufacturers. They started by repairing set-top boxes and their remote controls for OEMs. Today, the startup repairs more than 200k devices in a month including mobile phones, laptops, televisions, fridges, washing machines, speakers, headphones and other products.
“The funds are going to be largely used to scale the technology in the company, to market the brand that now we have developed under Qarmatek – Mobex,” cofounder of the company, Krunal Shah told ET. “In Mobex, everything is going to be all things mobile. We are creating our own platform from where people can continuously buy renewed phones. We have constantly been in the business of repairing and refurbishing mobile phones, which now we are going forward and taking it to the last mile wherein the major portion of the country will be able to buy directly from us and from the platforms that we sell.”
Expansion is another avenue where the funds will be utilised. Currently, the company is present in Gujarat but gradually it is looking to widen its footprint and enter multiple cities in Karnataka, Telangana, Rajasthan, NCR and Maharashtra over the next two years.
“The market size in India would be somewhere around $4-5 billion and that is specifically in the mobile phone category,” he explained. “The plans are to be in multiple categories. The categories could be tablets, laptops, LED televisions and multiple other things that are electronic and to provide those services. But that is in the future and the market size would be much larger.”
Shah said that in 2020 when Qarmatek started a pilot it was selling around 200-300 phones a month. And in 2021, this number increased to 500-700 phones a month. Now, he said the company is seeing traction of a ‘couple of 1000s.’ And this is likely to go all the way up to 18-20,000 phones a month being sold.
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