MSI gets down to serious business in India

Taiwan-based MSI is in for some serious business in India with aggressive

plans for coming years. The company is setting up office with a team of six

dedicated people in New Delhi. The team will be headed by Frank Sherap, who is

currently the Account Manager-Sales for MSI at Taiwan. This team will be further

expanded to fit in another 20 to 25 employees spread across the country over the

next few years.

Until recently, the company was operating with just a Sales Manager-Atul

Arora, who was appointed last year. During this period, the company appointed

four distributors: Priya Group in Mumbai, Maxtone in Mumbai, CyberStar in

Bangalore and Tirupati in Kolkata for distributing its products.Current plans

include the appointment of one more distributor and reorganizing its channel

structure. The company is in talks with Sahara Electronics as the fifth

distributor. "As far as the channel strategy is concerned, we would be

appointing about 30 to 35 resellers as Premium resellers," said Ted Hung,

Manager-Sales and Marketing Division, Taiwan. "This is the right time for

MSI to promote its products in India because of the recent changes in the duty

structure. This has made this market an attractive destination for imported

goods," he added.

For the last one year, MSI was not on the forefront with any aggressive

marketing initiatives for the channel. However, MSI officials who have been

claiming that it was studying the Indian market until now, is steadily

laying-out plans to fight competition in the motherboard space. According to

Ted, a marketshare of 10% can be easily achieved in the first year from now, as

they will be in a position to compete on price and features for their products.

Motherboards are not the only products that it intends to be aggressive with.

According to Frank Chen, Section Manager, APEC Sales-Channel Sales, MSI plans to

promote a slew of products including graphic cards, notebook PCs, entertainment

PCs, and MP3 players. However, focus on these products will be increased only

after putting the after-sales mechanism in place for each product. Once the

operating starts fully, the company will be holding roadshows and promotions for

both resellers and end-users.

NELSON JOHNY