Skyworth, KwaZulu-Natal’s largest electronics manufacturer, has successfully launched the award-winning Nex Playground motion games into South African retailers and announced that it has begun rolling out the first of its digital lifestyle products under a new brand, QVWi. These include streaming devices, broadband routers and portable power solutions – both instore and online.
A Premier Brand of Skyworth, QVWi is following this up with the launch of its locally assembled Google televisions.
Akash Panday, Managing Director of Skyworth Digital Middle East Africa (MEA) as well as Group CEO of QVWi, says that a 10-year-old international investment into manufacturing is now bearing fruit.
Home to Africa’s largest television manufacturing lines (where a wide range of products are created), including smart Google TV’s as well as three TV Google or Android streaming devices, monitors for gaming and office, broadband devices, portable and residential power solutions and internet protocol cameras (IPC).
At the heart of the QVWi brand ecosystem, sits a digital wallet that is soon to become the epitome of the brand. Known as QVWi Pay, it is backed by Mastercard and a leading bank. QVWi Pay will allow users to get additional benefits linked to QVWi products such as extended warranty, discounts, vouchers and many other value-added benefits. The ecosystem will launch shopping, insurance, parking payment, cloud-based printing services and insurance applications to become a formidable player in the wallet space.
“From the outset, we are following our market to where the need is greatest in South Africa in light of the ongoing electricity crisis. As a group, we are investing heavily into providing the power that drives this range of lifestyle brands – portable batteries, solar panels and inverters. We’ve already rolled out portable power solutions into retailers and we are working with our Skyworth Green Energy Division on residential and commercial inverters and solar panels,” explains Panday.
Closely aligned with this has been the building of strong bonds in the retail space.
Nazim Cassim, CEO of QVWi Retail said the brand ethos was based on three key things – collaborative partnerships in the retail space, product innovation and simplicity.
The entire range of products is designed to work in harmony, providing a seamless and integrated user experience.
“Simplicity does not mean lack of sophistication. Instead, it signifies ease of use, intuitive interfaces and seamless integration. We have leveraged market data to build our product assortment. Based on the size of the opportunity and emerging trends, we believe that we have positioned ourselves for growth,” he explains.
QVWi’s brand essence is driven on Unleashing the Extra-Ordinary – with a diverse range of extra-ordinary products and digital lifestyle solutions while celebrating the extra-ordinary achievements and champion spirit of all South Africans. The brand is already participating in Motorsport development under the QVWi Motorsport umbrella, and in the spirit of world class champions, recently signed their two new brand ambassadors, Makazole Mapimpi and Vincent Koch. The signing of these two ambassadors signify the brand’s commitment to partnering and celebrating with local champions.
The brand also has a CSI initiative, The Pink Room Foundation, which aims to support, uplift and empower children and women in local communities primarily through feeding and outreach projects. To date, the foundation has provided over 135 000 sandwiches to local communities and QVWi has committed to contributing directly from sales to the Foundation.
Panday believes that the development of QVWi out of a small KZN electronics company into Africa’s largest electronics producer is an example of what South African businesses can achieve. The KZN-based division of the global giant, which started out producing set top boxes for Multichoice, is the original design manufacturer of choice among most tier 1 broadcasters in the Middle East and Africa (MEA) region.
Cassim is confident that the QVWi range has significant growth potential in South Africa alone.
According to Statistics South Africa, the country manufactures more than R90bn worth of electro-technical equipment per year. Overall, electronics manufacturing contributes 4% to South Africa’s total manufacturing output.
With South Africa being the gateway into the rest of Africa, this opens the way to an estimated 1.2 billion customers capable of spending more than US$10 billion. Here, the largely underdeveloped market is expected to show robust growth, particularly when it comes to consumer electronics.
QVWi’s sophisticated ecosystem of digital lifestyle solutions will not only be rolled out across South Africa and Africa during 2024 but will also launch in the Middle East with Skyworth MEA already having established offices in Media City in Dubai.
For more information, visit www.qvwi.com