Ashish Thakkar Wants to Take on Global Giants with Mara Smartphones

The CEO and founder of the Mara Group which has created the first smartphone in Africa says he will take on global giants such as Samsung in the highly competitive mobile market.

Ashish Thakkar announced plans to manufacture the affordable Mara X and Mara Z smartphones in South Africa at the inaugural South African Investment Conference held in November 2018.

President Cyril Ramaphosa and Thakkar officially launched his R 1.5 billion smartphone factory at the Dube Trade Port in Durban.

The group launched two smartphones developed in partnership with Google, as part of the Android One Program in Rwanda earlier this month, describing them as the first “Made in Africa” models.

Speaking to the SABC, Thakkar says he the company designed the products to serve the domestic, regional and continental markets.

“So it primarily for Africa, even though we do have a lot of distribution inquiries from around the world which we will be fulfilling as well. But our real core focus is to make sure our home market gets strong first and then look at the rest of the continent.”

Thakkar says the smartphones will be affordable.

“So that’s what we are very excited about. It’s extremely high quality and really, really good specs and the retail price is R 2,999 and R 3,999.”

Thakkar has not ruled out producing tablet device at the new plant in Durban.