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Though battling with apathy from the channel, Sanjay Koul is confident that
once a national distributor is appointed, he will be able to concentrate better
on partner development programs. Once the distribution is taken care of, they
will be unable to address the channel issues, which he hopes to rectify shortly
The channel has been complaining about apathetic behavior from the Imation
team. Do you accept this?
Well, it is not that our team is apathetic towards the dealers. It is just
that we are unable to devote much time to our channel and that is causing a
narrow gap between us.
We have realized that because we were assigning the distribution process to
our team itself, they were facing additional pressure. Hence, they were not able
to interact with channel in a broad way and address their concern and issues.
This is precisely the reason that has made our dealers unhappy. We have
chalked out some plans to solve the issue and would soon be taking some
initiatives.
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Sanjay Koul
Country Manager, Imation India |
Does this mean that you will now appoint a national distributor?
Our team finds it difficult to develop a focused relationship with dealers
as they are more engaged with the distribution process. Imation wants to
liberate them from this task and concentrate more on the channel, which would
nurture contentment on both sides.
Therefore we have decided to appoint national distributor who has good reach
in the market and can handle the responsibility well. We will officially
announce the name shortly. Currently, we have 40 regional distributors who
manage distribution in their respective regions. Our team members have to
coordinate with all of them and sort out all issues and business deals. This
consumes a lot of time and energy. But with a national distributor in place, we
will have the command of distribution in all regions.
Have you classified channel based on products?
We have two types of partners; one who addresses the sale of consumables
like optical devices. They target customers like home PC buyers, retail chains,
laptop buyers, end customers, etc.
The second set of partners is one who is specially working with large
enterprises for their datacenter applications where magnetic tapes are required.
The latter is mostly handed by system integrators who have big project and sell
storage as integrated part of their solution.
Imation has acquired two companies-Memorex and TDK in the last one year.
How do you plan to position these brands in the Indian market?
We have acquired only the media division of TDK that include optical
devices.
Also, Memorex is more involved in consumer products and we are yet to launch
the products in the market. Memorex products will be positioned through retail
chains across the Indian market. We are in talk with various retail chains
across the country like Reliance and Croma to ensure that they have good
positioning on the shelves. Imation has more of 'pronsumer' products,
whereas Memorex is a consumer product that is available in the global market in
attractive packaging and flashy designs.
So far your products were being aimed at the metro customers. Do you
propose to continue this focus?
Imation wants to reach to new markets with a consolidated approach and wants to
make its presence felt in a more compact way. We started with eight big cities
and now we are expanding to other locations.
The market is expanding in a big way especially in B and C-class cities.
Therefore, a big opportunity lies there. Moreover, observing the trend, there
would be a boom in retail showrooms and we have to ensure consistent supply of
our products to those chains.
For eg, Reliance has come up with so many retail chains and it plans to
increase this number. This means more retail outlets will be opened in tier-2
class cities, so we have to make our presence there.
You have recently launched flash cards in the market. Why was Imation late
in entering into flash business?
Yes, we were a bit late in entering in the business of flash drives. But we
have grabbed a good position in the market in this regime and one can see our
stand among the top in any of the surveys. We are growing 100 percent month over
month in the market. We are the only company in the US that has 300 R&D centers.
How do you view this changing trend in storage devices segment?
As the IT industry is witnessing a revolutionary change, the same
developments are happening with storage devices too. Within two years, the
market for floppy discs has been wiped out.
Few years back, there was no requirement for storing videos, MP3 songs or
photographs. Today, the cost per GB is declining day by day. Visualizing this
changing scenario, we are offering products like double layer DVD or mini DVD.
Are Indian customers bothered about the health of magnetic tapes?
It is true that awareness level of consumers about the health of magnetic
tapes is not impressive. They do not realize that tapes also have its life. To
create awareness, we are running programs called I-Health for enterprises where
we scan of tapes and tell customers about the health of tapes, whether it can
survive for long or whether it needs to be migrated.
Any mishandling can cost a millions of dollars company by the loss of data.
We are conducting small training sessions where we train enterprises to handle
their data effectively. We run another exercise called Degaussing, where we
format the older tapes to new ones. Thereby, we ensure that older tapes are
destroyed in an eco-friendly and secured manner. We are in the process to give a
structured shape to this service.
You were related with SMC Networks and now you are in optical media business,
both being very different from each other. How comfortable were you in adjusting
yourself to a new business line?
From my perspective, it is the same. I was looking after the local operations
and distribution of SMC Networks. The responsibilities are the same here; the
only difference is in the product line.
Networking is something that one has to pre-plan and then drive the sale. In
media devices, it is the after-sale market that counts. Here, we have to
understand the buying patterns of customers, trends of the market, consumer
segment of the market and then design the strategies accordingly.
Amrita Tejasvi
amritat@cybermedia.co.in Page(s) 1
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