Bangladesh electronics giant Walton enters GCC market

By Saifur Rahman, Business Editor

DUBAI -- Bangladeshi consumer electronics brand Walton has entered the Gulf through a franchise agreement with a Dubai-based company. Separately, a Qatar-based company acquired the rights to Walton's business on the peninsula.

Walton employs 12,000 workers in Bangladesh's largest household consumer goods manufacturing plant.

It distributes 4,500 types and models of goods ranging from mobile handsets, microwave ovens, DVD players, LCD and LED televisions to motorcycles and sells them through a network of 4,986 outlets, sales centres and dealers across the country.

It manufactures 1.4 million refrigerators and freezers, 300,000 airconditioners, 1 million television sets and 300,000 motorcycles.

"We started three months ago and our first consignment has been sold out before schedule," Mahmoud Mamun, Managing Partner of Mohd Moqbul Trading LLC — franchisee of the Walton brand, told Gulf News.

"We are currently finalising distributorship and sub-franchisee arrangements in all seven emirates and Al Ain within the UAE and Oman before entering the Saudi market.

This is in addition to five containers re-exported to Afghanistan. The company, which stocks goods in an Ajman warehouse, is looking for another in Jebel Ali.

"During the first year of operation, we plan to import and sell more than 120 40-foot containers worth Dh10 million.

‘Made in Bangladesh’

Walton has an end-to-end manufacturing plant that produces components in 200 factories and then manufactures brown and white goods from those in the production line, promoting the ‘Made in Bangladesh’ label.

In 2009, Walton bought a mobile handset manufacturing plant in South Korea that once manufactured Nokia and other mobile cellphone brands. Following the acquisition, it has shifted the plant to Bangladesh where it produces millions of handsets every year.

"For the UAE market we have brought a few models to suit the needs of our customers," Mamun says. "Our cheapest handset that sells for Dh100, offers dual sim, radio, camera, internet, social media, video recording among other features — that you don't get for Dh100."

The number of mobile subscriptions in Bangladesh increased 50 per cent to 86.57 million in January, according to the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission. Bangladesh's population is an estimated 160 millionAir Jordan XIV 14 Shoes