There have been several companies that have disrupted businesses in India over the years. One such company OnePlus, which was founded in 2013. The Chinese smartphone company's high-end products have given established players a run for their money.

OnePlus is unusual among Chinese tech companies, which typically focus on mass-market products for domestic customers. OnePlus, by contrast, only sells premium phones that cost $400 or more and almost exclusively online except in India. It derives two-thirds of its revenue from outside China and is the top seller of premium smartphones in India.

Carl Pei, the 30-year-old founder of OnePlus, Pei, was born in China and raised in Sweden. Pei earlier worked with Nokia and Oppo before founding OnePlus with Pete Lau.

In an interview with Pei talked about failures and what startups can learn from his mistakes.

There are 3 stories about failure. The first mistake is about using the wrong solution for the wrong problem. So our mistake was panicking.”

The OnePlus 7 clocked in USD 144 million in sales within 1 minute of its China release.

“The second mistake was, focusing on too many things that kind of boosted the ego instead of focusing on things that really helped the company. So our mistake here was that we wasted so much time and energy on things that were feeding our ego,” he said.

OnePlus earned over USD 300 million in revenue in its first year in 2014.

“The third mistake is about hiring the wrong people. We started getting really high-quality applicants, people with great background and soon enough the problems started occurring -they thought that they were smarter than everyone else. These people, of course, are no longer with us anymore but looking back, having these people has probably hurt us more than not having them. We learned the lesson that culture comes first than hiring. Everything else is secondary,” Pei said.

First Published:Dec 5, 2019 5:06 PM IST