In the fast-paced world of technology, smartwatches have emerged as a quintessential accessory, revolutionizing the way we interact with our devices and monitor our health. India, with its youthful population and burgeoning consumer base, has witnessed a remarkable surge in demand for smartwatches in recent years. To delve deeper into this phenomenon, we had the privilege of sitting down with Vikas Jain, Co-Founder of PLAY Design Labs, a leading player in the smartwatch market. Join us as we explore the evolving landscape of smartwatches in India and uncover the factors driving their unprecedented growth.
Discuss the growth of demand of smartwatch?
India, being a burgeoning population centered around youth, has witnessed meteoric growth to become a behemoth of a smartwatch consumer consumption economy. We have become the single largest smartwatch market in the world surpassing many others. From early adoption, courtesy, the pandemic 2020, the form factor has found resonance amongst the Indian, especially, youth consumers. The evolving needs have grown over fondness for monitoring individual fitness rituals to having an ability to have voice conversations using the smartwatch. With the advancement and stabilization of the Bluetooth technology, the BT connection is more stable and robust to provide for a seamless voice communication using the BT channel of the smartwatch paired to BT of the mobile phone. Obviously, with economies of scale helping the form factor, better display resolution and also the battery backup have become a necessary requirement of the consumer.
Explain the evolving trends like AI enabled, blood sugar.
Smartwatch is quickly evolving to be the able backup of the mobile device. Utilitarian guidance of health parameters is seen a significant consumer demand in India and monitoring BP, SP02, etc for a medical guidance does provide for a good consumer use case. With the recent buzz on AI and similar platforms, most brands are trying to use the smartwatch form factor to enable the same for the end consumers.
Explain your take on smartwatches being a style statement.
Definitely the increased consumption of smartwatch form factor in India sits at the back of the same being a technological fashion brilliance and available at practically a fraction of the cost of the regular analogue watch wristwear. Consumers are able to digital track their fitness schedule and other fitness monitors as well as flaunt the same to be fashionably savvy too.
Discuss the emergence of smartwatches for kids and senior citizens?
While the forma factor is a sure requirement of the consumer, the regulatory framework doesn’t allow the same to be launched in India. Most of the educational institutes, if not all, prohibit the student to be accompanied with electronic consumer electronic products like smartwatch and mobile phones. While as a parent and guardian, you could be anxious of the well-being of your ward when not at home, the policies of the educational institutes, do not allow mass adoption of the same inspite of the consumer use case. Senior citizens have seen some half-baked/erroneous solutions launched by few new entrants but much need to be worked upon the accuracy of the medical grade sensors as that’s the biggest use case in senior citizens.
How do you position your brand in the market?
The design philosophy of World of Play indexes itself around an overall consumer experience and not just a hardware attribute. While for an easy consumer acquisition, a hardware feature might help some brands, the overall way the hardware feature is used to provide a seamless total consumer experience, differentiates a brand from a new entrant. Care for consumer data protection is both mandated by the government and is becoming of utmost importance to the Indian consumers. The continuity of data monitoring using the smartwatch while changing the mobile device or the smartwatch has started being a preferred feature for consumer delight and retention. At PLAY, we focus on a seamless integration of hardware, software and data hosting and privacy to provide a total customer satisfaction.
Discuss the latest innovations that you are likely to come up with
With the recent technology advancement, we see a major consumer use case of adoption of medical-grade sensors on the smartwatch form factor. We remain heavily invested in this space to being our next set of consumer innovation. We are also working towards seamless adoption of the latest mobile technology to seamlessly integrate the mobile phone experience on the smartwatch. Health, Fashion and entertainment will be the key covenants to drive further adoption of smartwatch in the Indian markets.
