Oura entered the Indian market last week with the official launch of its Ring 4.

The Finland-based wearable announced its entry into the Indian market with a campaign that has been spread across OOH, print and digital.

We caught up with George Abbott, head - EMEA and APAC, Oura, to learn more about the brand’s entry into India and how it plans to make inroads in a highly competitive marketplace.

Edited excerpts:

What was the reason behind the launch right now? It seems to be a pretty cluttered market...

We are extremely excited to be in the Indian market, and it’s been a long time coming. We have been planning for the launch for a long time. For now, it’s about raising awareness for the brand and the category.

We are seeing print and outdoor creatives currently for the product. What’s the idea behind the marketing plan?

The primary goal is to increase awareness. We will do it in a number of ways. We felt that retail was a great starting point to enter the country, and we are working with strategic partners that can help us grow awareness.

We are not just focused on the initial six to eight weeks. We want to come back to the market with influencers and have some interesting celebrity associations lined up, too, to raise awareness. That’s going to happen in the next three to six months.

We love OOH, so we’re on the medium. We also believe in experiential marketing, and so we’ll be doing quite a lot in that space.

We’re also looking at online editorials. For us, it’s about connecting with hearts and minds – we want to help people understand the story of Oura and what the product can do, and also how it can change people’s lives. We’ve also used print for the same and will continue to do it across media in the coming months.

We will continue working with our retail partners (Croma and Amazon) for this.

What made these the right retail partners? Are you looking to expand this footprint?

For now, we’re sticking to these two. We are very selective in our distribution, and both Croma and Amazon are fantastic partners for different reasons.

We have a global partnership with Amazon, and they are a key partner for us.

In India, Croma felt like the right brick and mortar retail to launch with. Traditional retail is important to us because of the form factor – we want people to see the ring in the right environment. Croma understood the category and believed in education – the Croma team itself and the consumer too.

You see value in both celebrity and influencer engagement?

Without sharing any names but what makes it exciting for us is that we have some popular user of our products already. So, we are looking for organic users of our products initially, and that’s the starting point.

They can talk passionately about the product and share their experiences of the membership too. That’s important, and we are currently working on those plans.

The celebrity users include the likes of Hrithik Roshan, right? Would he be among the celebrity endorsers listed?

There are a few using it. So the celebrities and influencers we use can speak in an authoritative manner to the Indian audience. We will be deliberate in this approach.

We are delighted that other celebrity users include Alia Bhat and Sonam Kapoor, already use the product. We will talk a little more about the celebrity endorsements when we are ready to do so.

We’ve seen a lot of cricketers using the Whoop. Would you tap into that too?

It’s an interesting one, and we have looked at it for sure. We are spending time looking at it to figure out what we can do there.

India is quite price sensitive, so how will Oura look to compete given it’s relatively late entry?

Many markets worldwide are price sensitive, and we are aware about it. We are the category creator and the market leaders. We want to be true to our core values. We believe that in a number of areas in which we can speak to the country, firstly, telling them why a ring is better than a wrist wearable. Accuracy and privacy are an integral part of our commercial strategy. If I had to narrow down differentiators, those two would be key factors.

This is our fourth generation of the ring. We have put all our experience of the market into this product and will continue to help educate the Indian consumers on the differences of the product. There are some fantastic products in the market, but we believe this is the right one for the Indian consumer to purchase.

What’s the short-term target for Oura in the country?

We don’t share financial targets and numbers. For us, it’s all about brand awareness. Every piece of activity we do in India is focused on growing the awareness in the market, and will have a cumulative effect and lead to greater awareness.

We’ll check in three months' time to see what the growth has looked like and then set new goals.

Do you see any challenges in this market?

We see challenges in every market. Challenge number one is how we speak directly to the Indian audience. We want to be culturally sensitive and remain true to our goal of being truly authentic.