Micromax will launch its new In-branded smartphone on November 3 to take on Xiaomi, Realme and others

It’s official. Micromax will launch its next smartphone in India on November 3. This will be the homegrown brand’s first smartphone in nearly two years, with co-founder Rahul Sharma himself spearheading the comeback campaign with fresh vigour. We all know why Micromax is doing this — why now, after all this time. Not that any of it is a secret anyway.

Micromax and its co-founder have been fairly — in fact, very — vocal about this on social media. In a promotional video shared days ahead of today’s announcement, Rahul Sharma shared a heart-felt message with the “country” about how the ongoing India-China standoff sparked the whole move — despite Rahul Sharma having left the world of making smartphones, to float his new next-gen mobility company Revolt Motors. Apparently Micromax is making smartphones again because the people of India have been asking it do that amid the incumbent government’s clarion call for going vocal for local.

While it’s all nice and good, Micromax’s hype spree seems all about tapping the sentimental side of India through a misaligned, even inappropriate to an extent, campaign of bashing China rather than talking about the actual product or products that the “Indian” brand has been working on. And that is after it has openly admitted of losing out to Chinese brands once upon a time. Today’s announcement is also accompanied by a short promo and instead of talking about what’s coming, the brand instead chose to say, “aao karein thodi cheeni kum” and even though it uses “tea” in the backdrop along with its own English translation of sorts that “gone are the days of sugar-coating everything,” it’s pretty obvious what Micromax is hinting at.

When instead it could have talked about how Micromax smartphones will be different this time. Remember, Micromax is the same brand that has a record of selling rebranded Chinese phones in India. Hopefully, there’s a good product out there somewhere that justifies even half the cringe-fest that’s going around on social media. Fingers crossed.

As for rumour mills, Micromax is said to be readying two budget smartphones — at least — under its new In series. Watch this space for our full coverage on everything that’s coming from Micromax in the days to come.