Hey folks, Pratham here.

Welcome back to Paradox Weekly, a Masters' Union newsletter, where we break down the ideas, trends, and contradictions shaping business today.

A company you've probably never heard of makes one in two smartphones sold in India.

Its brands have been number one in the Indian premium segment, the budget segment, and the mid-range simultaneously.

The company is called BBK Electronics.

The brands are Oppo, Vivo, OnePlus, Realme, and iQOO.

Most people reading this have owned at least one of them but don’t know they’re all owned by the same company. 

And that’s today’s paradox: invisibility of ownership helps penetrate the market further.

In November 2013, Pete Lau resigned from Oppo after a decade, including a stint as VP. 

A month later, he and Carl Pei (a 24-year-old who had been managing Oppo's international markets) founded OnePlus with six employees and one institutional backer: Oppo itself.

The context: Oppo and Vivo had built massive offline retail empires across China and India through celebrity endorsements and deep distributor margins. 

But they had zero premium credibility in Western markets and minimal traction in India's ₹30,000+ segment. 

OnePlus was engineered to be everything its parent couldn't be: online-only, community-driven, near-stock Android, global presence based on price and product rather than influencers.

OnePlus launched exclusively on Amazon India in December 2014 with an invite system (get invited, share 3 invites with friends that are timebound), and by 2018 it had 40% of India's premium smartphone market, ahead of Samsung and Apple. 

By 2019 it was the undisputed number one premium brand in India for the full year, the first Chinese brand to achieve that.

The strategy worked because OnePlus's software was genuinely cleaner than any Chinese competitor. 

Its community forums shaped product decisions. 

And the 'Never Settle' positioning worked because the company was kept separate from its parent.

OnePlus cracking India's premium segment proved two things the rest of the BBK family needed: Indian consumers would pay premium prices for a Chinese brand, and direct-to-consumer e-commerce worked at scale.

On May 4, 2018, shortly after OnePlus demonstrated premium viability, Realme was born. 

Founded by a former Oppo VP, India-first, online-first, priced to take Xiaomi's budget market directly. 

Its CMO openly acknowledged the structural advantage: they shared a supply chain with Oppo. 

iQOO followed in 2020 for gaming.

Vivo and Oppo doubled down on offline, and the market encirclement was complete. 

By 2024, one company's portfolio controlled roughly half of every smartphone sold in India, through five brands that publicly appeared to compete with each other.

The consumers chose freely but none of the options were actually independent.

Carl Pei left OnePlus on October 16, 2020, his 31st birthday. 

He said he wanted to build without a parent company deciding what to do. 

He founded Nothing in London and by 2024 which has been among the fastest-growing smartphone brands in India.

With Pei gone, the absorption began in earnest.

In January 2021, OnePlus merged its R&D team with Oppo's.
In June 2021, Pete Lau posted on the OnePlus forums announcing "deeper integration." 

A leaked internal memo confirmed what many suspected: "With the integration, OnePlus becomes a brand within Oppo." 

OxygenOS, the clean near-stock Android software that was the reason OnePlus users stayed loyal, was merged with Oppo's ColorOS. 

By 2025, Android Central declared OxygenOS 16 was functionally aligned to ColorOS. 

The alert slider disappeared, pre-installed bloatware appeared, and custom ROM installation was restricted.

Prices went from being 50% of flagships to 80% of them. 

The market responded accordingly.

Around 4,500 Indian retail stores reportedly stopped stocking it.

TLDR: What the enthusiasts loved about the brand was taken away by BBK. The brand’s enthusiasts started looking elsewhere.

This pattern has a name in management literature: the Icarus Paradox, where a company's strengths become its weaknesses. 

But the OnePlus case has a sharper edge. The sub-brand's success is what triggers the parent, and the parent is what destroys it.

BBK created a company called OnePlus to solve a problem: no premium credibility abroad. 

OnePlus solved it by being everything BBK was not. 

That solution succeeded so completely that BBK absorbed it back, and recreated the original problem.

I see versions of this constantly in Indian business.

Titan runs Tanishq for premium jewelry, Fastrack for youth, and Sonata for economy. 

Same parent, three completely different consumer perceptions, all deliberate. 

HUL owns Surf Excel, Rin, and Wheel: three detergent brands at three price points, competing on the same shelf. 

Tata bought Jaguar Land Rover for £1.15 billion in 2008. Most Range Rover owners globally have no idea their car is made by a Tata company. 

The invisibility of the parent is what makes the premium positioning of the child credible.

VW lets Porsche tune a Cayenne to feel nothing like the identically-platformed Audi Q8. 

LVMH gives each Maison its own creative director and won't let synergies bleed through into the customer experience. 

They understand that the cost of independence is the price of the strategy. 

The moment you stop paying it, you've already begun destroying what you built.

That’s the BBK and OnePlus story. 

Think about it: Was OnePlus really a startup? Or was it disguised into one to create a community? That’s the beauty of brand building. 

I read every email.

Until next week,
Pratham