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Khwaja Saifuddin Ahmad, Sr Sales Director-Middle East, Africa and South
Asia, Western Digital
Could you tell us about Western
Digital's structural reorganization that has taken place recently?
Digital has recently undergone
a structural reorganization, and India leadership has passed on into
the hands of the EMEA headquarters. Though Sushil Bandi continues to
be Country Manager, the India business is being headed by me. This
reorganization is slated to reflect most on the company's channel
business and at the marketing
fronts, for the simple reason that the new leadership is trying to
replicate its EMEA success in India as well. The company believes
that Indians can run the India business much better, as they tend to
understand the market in a much better way, know the DNA and what
exactly works here. So, instead of spending time and money on
experiments, they know exactly what can work and what cannot. And
then, they can take the message back to higher management in a much
understandable way.
What has been the company's focus
towards the Indian market?
India needed much more focus in the
APAC region, as there are countries like China, Vietnam, Philippines,
and Australia amongst others that are also growing at a faster pace
like India. The Indian structure remains unchanged as it was before.
It is just that the country manager of India instead of reporting to
APAC, now reports to the Dubai office. Even the strategy per say
remained unchanged. Instead of planning and implementation being done
at APAC, is done out of Dubai. However, WD is still in the process of
establishing its footprint in the Indian market, especially in the
external storage or the consumer market. Though it claims to be the
world's largest hard drive manufacturer and being at the top
position on the external side for the last two years, the management
is finding out the reasons as to why the company is not able to
break-in the Indian market. The only pitfall here is that we don't
have a neutral market agency or market analyst who does mapping of
hard drive industry in India. We do appreciate presence of partners
like
IDC and others but they don't cover hard drive industry.
Unfortunately in India, we are still looked upon as underdogs.
What is the contribution of Indian
market in your overall business?
The major share of WD's Indian
business is coming from home or the single point users; the SOHO and
the enterprise is still to match up with it. This is the area where
it is working on educating the consumers. The knowledge or
educational side is still lacking in the masses. However, seeing the
sheer size of the market, the geographical break up, and different
buying patterns, it is not going to be easy to break this mindset. It
would be a challenge, as it is not 'one size fit all' market. For
every consumer, there is a different need and you have to adapt
yourself to these needs. Market will never change for you. At the
moment, globally, WD is having close to 40 percent market share on
internal drives and it would like to follow the same for India. For
the external drives, it is already enjoying much large market share
around the world, and that is the same which it needs for Indian
market as well. The company's target is to reach these figures in
next one year.
Also, what has been WD's channel
focus here in India?
The company is also working on its
channel structure in terms of consolidation. Today, it has about six to
seven focused and committed
distributors, including HCL, Redington, Global and Jupiter. It has also
partnered with Neoteric
Infomatique for LFR business and Ingram Micro for HP externals (it
manufactures external hard drives for
HP). Besides, Redington is one of its key partners in Middle East as
well. As a direct relationship in
terms of supply, WD works with local OEM branches of HCL, Wipro, and
Zenith. As far as channel partners are concerned, it is directly in
touch with them, wherein it constantly keeps them updated on the
products, give them technical know-how on new products, and take
feedback from them. The company has one-on-one interaction
relationship with the channel partners. Instead of them being just
used as the buyer or the seller or the hand to move the boxes, WD
treats them as a hand which helps it
to make those boxes.