10M units shipped with 173% YOY growth

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This relatively new Chinese smartphone brand grew 173% year on year in Southeast Asia despite the Covid-19 pandemic. Wait, what? How? We figure that out in today’s premium story (🔒). Scroll down if you’d like a summarized read.

But first, your quick bytes for the day:

1️⃣ The former acting CEO of Luckin Coffee is now officially its new CEO.

2️⃣ Say hello to Jio Platforms’ potential new investor: Google. The tech giant is reportedly in talks to inject a US$4 billion investment into the India-based firm.

3️⃣ Three million more Australians can now enjoy hailing rides on Didi Chuxing as it expands into smaller cities and towns in the country.

4️⃣ Hotel startup Oyo will be merging its hotel and short-term residential businesses in Japan as soon as this month.

5️⃣ Seventy seven: That’s the number of questions the Indian government has posed to Chinese companies like TikTok-owner ByteDance, whose apps they have banned.

6️⃣ Thailand’s leading fast-food restaurant chain, Central Restaurants Group, is looking to open 100 cloud kitchens in the next five years.

The new turbocharged phone brand

Move over Oppo: Your cousin is going to catch up really soon. Realme, an ex-sub-brand of Oppo, went solo in 2018, and it’s now closing in to become the fastest-growing smartphone brand in Southeast Asia. How did it achieve this (🔒)?

• Say hi to millennials and zoomers. Realme knows the way to a young user’s heart — the company holds press conferences in school campuses and nightclubs and relies mostly on online marketing and sales channels.
• A focus on fun. Young users spend a lot of time on entertainment apps, so Realme makes sure that it’s entertainment features are entertaining. For example, it launched a performance-enhanced handset for gamers and provided distinct sound modes for different activities.
• Oppo is huge. Having the third-largest smartphone maker in Southeast Asia behind your back helps. Realme uses Oppo’s manufacturing facilities for production, and it is also maybe using Oppo’s offline retail shops.

Read more analysis on Oppos vs. Realme vs. Xiaomi here: A Chinese smartphone brand’s rapid rise in Southeast Asia, India (🔒)

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