GN Netcom eyes UC market in India

Gurgaon: GN Netcom is gearing up to tap the unified communications market in India. According to Dinesh Malkani, VP and GM-Asia Pacific, GN Netcom, this is the right time to enter the market with their solutions given that the UC market is just maturing in the country. "The market is at an inflection point. The vendors who have been in this space have spent considerable time on educating customers about UC. So a lot of the ground work has been done. We have been readying our partners so that when we go to market it is ready for our products," stated Malkani.

Speaking about the opportunity in India, Malkani shared that most of the business they were seeing was coming from the call centers. "We are witnessing acceleration in the UC space as many companies are pursuing it actively. But while we will continue our focus on call centers we will also target end-users and cater to their office use," added Malkani.

Ralph Ede, MD-South Asia, GN Netcom shared that from among the South Asian countries, the company was seeing the highest growth in India. This can be attributed to the nature of UC. Being a technology that offers cost-savings and increase in operational efficiency the number of companies adopting it has been high.

GN Netcoms would be speaking to partners who sell Microsoft or Cisco UC solutions and look at offering bundled packages. "Our products would be complimentary to those of say Microsoft or Cisco. We need to interface with vendor software applications so that our product is plug-n-play," explained Malkani, referring to the Jabra headsets that were launched in the country recently.

The company has appointed Innova Telecom to market its products in India. Innova has around 60 resellers who are selling Jabra. This network would be expanded as the company expands its business in the country. "For a market like India we will need more partners. Our goal is to grow as we grow our business. We will then also be increasing our focus on tier-3 cities," added Ede.

The distributor has been certified to provide the after sales support of GN Network. The decision to certify Innova as the service provider was partially driven by the need to provide quick turnaround times, which would not have been viable from the Singapore office.

GN Netcome claims to be a 100 percent indirect company. The company posted a 50 percent growth last quarter. With a current marketshare of about 30 percent, GN Netcom is targeting an additional 10 percent within the next 12 months time. The company will be conducting roadshows in Jan 2010 that will bring together channel partners and customers.