Though Sahara has identified three countries as its core markets, it is India that it is focusing on most. Merwe believes that essentially a PC is the same, be it from any brand, but it is the service offered by vendors that is the differentiator. Hence, he is now working on strengthening Sahara's post-sales support infrastructure to grab more marketshare in India

Which regions is Sahara focusing on?
As a company we are focusing on three countries-Africa, Dubai and India. Africa is an emerging market and it is not yet as ripe as the Indian market.

We do not have the bandwidth to take on all the emerging markets because Asia in itself is a very resource-hungry market. It does not have a developed market where you can have a distribution structure, and can put products in an autonomous way.

Sahara's marketshare in India is not very high. What are you doing about it?
An emerging market is one in which you have to start from scratch by creating the market. You have to look at the PC penetration, which is less than one percent in India. One has to look; not just at selling PCs but also at how one can create awareness because that is most important.

One needs to create the marketshare. It would be foolish to think that you can create a marketshare and grab 100 percent of it. We have been present in the Indian market for two and a half years now. Infrastructure as well as power resources are the major problems prevalent here. We have gained enormous experience through Indian market, which would help us in future also as even Africa is plagued with the same problems.

George Van Der Merwe COO, Sahara Computers and Electronics

Is the customer mindset in India and Africa the same?
In an emerging market, the customer mindset is pretty much the same. They want the latest products at lowest prices. For eg, cellphone market is no more an emerging market. It has become an established market in India. People are now looking for more features in it.

But in an emerging market like that of PCs, consumers are looking for computers worth Rs 9,999. But they don't understand that what they are getting is not a PC. Yes, it has got speakers, speed, a keyboard and a box. But you listen to music or watch videos on it. You can't put applications on it or do spreadsheet accoun­ting or database development.

Does this mean that your go-to-market strategy in India is different from that in other countries?
No, we follow the same plan wherever we go. We focus on the market potential. The market potential that we saw in India was in B, C and D-class cities and all my schemes are directed towards these cities. All our outlets, partners, dealers and retailers are the ones where lies the potential for Sahara.

Are you not focusing on the metro cities at all?
The growth in metros has come to a standstill. Instead, customers here are very brand conscious. In B and C-class cities, no one really understands that concept. In a couple of years, B-class cities will graduate to A-class ones. So we need to start fixing the things at the root today so that when these cities progress, we progress with it.

Today we have got a service infrastructure and we focus not just on marketing activities, but also on our channel and services as well.

Sahara's competitors have partners providing post-sales service, which means that they are not ready to invest in services. But with Sahara, it is different. This is why we have started the SMS initiative where a customer can send an SMS and within 20 seconds have an executive call them back. Besides this, we have also launched an online complaint registration.

We have also started service camps where we visit dealers on particular days and ask them to bring a PC with any problem-software or hardware-and we clean the PC. If the customer is present, he can talk directly to the service engineer.

What we tell the customer is that we don't want to sell a computer to them. We want to help them buy a computer. There is a huge difference in the two. Selling a computer means that we are fulfilling our need, helping the customer buy means we are fulfilling his need.

Does this mean that you are using service to differentiate yourself from your peers?
There is only one Intel, one Seagate, five-odd motherboard manufacturers and three-odd memory manufacturers. Hence, essentially the PC created by any brand is the same. One area where we can create a difference is service and that is what people look for in smaller cities.

What kind of Indianization goes into your products, since India is an important market for Sahara?
Because we are focusing on B and C-class cities where power is a problem, our notebooks come with an eight-cell battery. Even our entry-level machines have DVD writers. We don't give combo drives because the media is moving to DVD writers.

With other PC and laptop vendors lowering the prices to tap more consumers, do you plan to reduce your prices for getting more marketshare?
These vendors offer Duo Core notebooks, which is an old technology. Their machines are Wi-Fi enabled and come with a six-cell battery. It usually has 80GB Quad RAM with low memory, typically around 1GB.

A customer buying that notebook needs wireless connectivity and a DVD writer instead of a combo drive. To access the Internet everywhere, he has to go and buy a wireless card, which costs around Rs 3,000. Other upgradations like a DVD writers will cost more. Ultimately, a customer ends up shelling out huge sum of money.

We have a standard pricing policy. With our notebooks and desktops, we try to look for the potential region. We don't compromise on performance or quality. We design products according to the customers' requirements. We definitely match the price point and no one can beat us on that.

What are you channel plans? Will you appoint any other distributor besides SES Technologies?
We have very focused channel partners. SES Technologies is fulfilling all our needs and has got the largest infrastructure in B and C-class cities, which shows that our visions match. Right now, we are not focusing on adding more partners.

Sahara's brand visibility is very low. Comment.
We do not have a selling approach. We would rather help a customer buy products. This is why we don't advertise a lot.

We focus more on smaller cities and concentrate more on roadshows. Soon we plan to organize roadshows for every single region, which takes up about at least 50 percent of our market development funds.

POOJA SHARMA
poojas@cybermedia.co.in

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