He is positive he will succeed in delivering the company's promise
of economically competitive, superior quality products to the discerning Indian
market.
Mukund Ramaratnam says he believes in pursuing whatever he does with passion.
And this is what brought him to India 15 years after he left the country to
pursue his higher studies and chart out a blazing career. In his new role as
Director, Marketing and Business Development for AMD India, he hopes to increase
AMD's mindshare as well as market share in the country.
When he joined AMD at the company headquarters in Sunnyvale, USA in 2003,
Mukund worked with the chip major's strategy division. There he dealt in areas
like manufacturing, business transformation-how to improve on cost structures
and devise strategies to be more flexible as a company and handle business
changes.
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Part of the job also involved something closer home-getting to work out
strategies on handling high-growth markets like India and other BRIC economies.
Says Mukund on the work, "My team formulated the strategy for senior
management. I was heavily involved with India. I felt that this was an area
where I could make a difference."
Impressed with his keen interest, the AMD management asked him if he was
interested in executing his plans in India. Mukund hardly missed a beat and
accepted the offer to join his new position in January 2005.
Making a big noise
Mukund contends that though AMD traditionally has been a strong
technology-driven company, its marketing message has not been as loud. "As
an organization, though we have been here (in India) for three years, we still
have a lot of ground to cover," he admits.
To address this, Mukund's priorities would include increasing the company's
brand awareness in the market place, its interaction with OEMs and getting
substantial traction in the enterprise segment. All these activities stem from
the fact that AMD considers India as a strategic region not just for
development, but also for increasing revenues.
Mukund reckons that his role is not just a marketing challenge, but also an
exercise in bringing technology in a way that is meaningful to the discerning
Indian market. He admits that this would require a different approach, knowing
rival chip giant Intel's deep pockets.
"Definitely our competitor has had a lot of marketing budgets
historically. But we plan to do things differently-through brand
association." He cites some examples of AMD's brand assets like the
Ferrari team, George Lucas of Star Wars fame and Dreamworkz.
The Indian scene
"India is a much more demanding market. People here just don't say
give me a good price. They also want the best possible features as well,"
says Mukund.
To create a significant dent in the Indian market, AMD's focus would now be
to put into motion different activities to build brand image and awareness for
both channels and end-users. These will be geared to ensure that OEMs and
partners see a shared value and rest assured that they view AMD as a company,
which is there with them for a long term.
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With the help of his team in India, he hopes to translate his personal goal
of seeing PCs grow in order of magnitude. "I believe we have the tools to
ramp up to what cell phones are doing in India," he claims.
Attitude is everything
Mukund trod the predictable path taken by IITians, when he went to the US after
his B-Tech at IIT Mumbai, to do his MS at the University of Southern
California. He also picked up an MBA degree at the prestigious Wharton School of
Business where he focused on three areas- marketing, information systems and
finance.
Subsequently, he took up a marketing and business development role at Amazon
at the height of the dotcom boom. He also worked as consultant with McKinsey
& Co before joining AMD.
To relax, Mukund unwinds to music especially jazz. While at Amazon, he and a
couple of friends got together to form a garage band called 'Adai', the
Tamil word for Cream. "I became the keyboard player for the band and I was
quite bad at it," admits Mukund with a laugh. The band obviously was a
tribute to the '70s band Cream, which boasted of guitar great-Eric Clapton.
Apart from his interest in music, Mukund enjoys a round of golf and also
considers Internet as a hobby.
Obviously a throwback to his Amazon days, he says that he loves studying the
various business models and look at how people interact with the medium. Mukund's
work-life philosophy is summed up in a saying that is framed on his office desk.
It reads 'Attitude is a little thing that makes a BIG difference'.