“We are very excited about the launch of Microsoft Vista. This is because any customer going for Vista will have to opt for an Nvidia graphic card to support the OS”

Operating out of the business center of Hotel JW Marriott in Mumbai,
Rajesh Goenka is working on setting up Nvidia's office in the country. He has
great plans for the company and wants to involve the channel in them. And coming
from the channel community himself, he feels that no one can understand partners'
issues better than him

What is the corporate hierarchy in Nvidia and where are you located within
it?

Ours is a flat organization. Jen-Hsun Huang is the CEO and has two VPs for sales
and marketing. Each in turn have their set of country managers. I look after the
marketing for Europe, Middle East and Asia.

Nvidia has always been a low-profile company in India. It did not have an
Indian office. So with you on board, is the company changing its stance on
India?

There is no denying that today India is one of the most important business
geographies for Nvidia. Yes, I admit that till two years ago, we had just two
people in the country, one in New Delhi and the other in Mumbai. But now, we
have realized that more feet on the ground are required. Also, we operate on the
principle that territories should not bar business. So, all of us travel
wherever an event has to be held and to meet customers. Also, we are online all
the time so business continuity is not affected because of a smaller workforce.

Rajesh Goenka Country Manager -Marketing, Nvidia

Additionally, we do have three development centers in Bangalore, Pune and
Hyderabad. We will be opening our office in Mumbai shortly, as most of our core
customers are here.

Who are your core customers?

Gamers, students, animation creators, production houses, media, architects or
designers are all our clients. Besides them, we are seeing a lot of traction in
the SME customer vertical as well. Also, the most important prospective
customers are our core customers. They have used our products and we have to
make sure that they continue to use it in the future as well.

How are you trying to create awareness about Nvidia in your customer's
minds?

In Jan 2007 itself, we had 11 events for varied buyer segments. These included
training seminars for partners, gaming holding, having shows in malls, etc.

In fact, we are focusing a lot on educational institutions, because we want
students to experience the visual imagery with graphic cards and then buy these
for their personal systems. This is why we have partnered in several
inter-school and collegiate functions, like Tech Fest in IIT, Mumbai. Also, we
partnered with Reliance World when they had a LAN gaming contest in Mumbai
recently. We have tied- up with Zapak.com, which has a series of gaming parlors
coming up. All their machines will carry our logo, so gamers will subconsciously
or consciously see our brand.

What about evangelization in the channel space?

We recently had a training seminar for our distributors, or rather for their
sales force. This is the first time that we had such an event in India. And
instead of calling all the distributors at one event, we focused on one
distribution house at each seminar. This is because we realized that sometimes
the sales people do not come forth and ask questions in these sessions, because
they feel that their competing distributors might benefit from it. Also, we know
that every distributor has its own strength. So we customized the seminars
keeping in mind the core strengths of our distributors instead of having a
homogenous presentation.

We are also working on holding a special partner program, though nothing has
been finalized. We are trying to make inroads into the smaller cities as we
realized that the true market potential lies here.

What is the channel contribution to your overall business?

Around 50 percent of our business comes from the channel, while the rest comes
from our OEM partnerships. The percentage contribution might not increase. But
the volumes that the channel will be able to bring in, is definitely going to
improve.

What are you looking forward to in this fiscal?

Currently, we are very excited about the launch of Microsoft Vista. This is
because any customer going for Vista will have to opt for an Nvidia graphic card
to support the OS. We are confident that within six months, most customers would
have migrated to Vista, because it a much better and secure platform for Windows
users.

Nvidia has been going all out to educate customers about this and also show
them how their viewing experience will differ when they go for the 8800GTX
graphic cards. We will bring out its economical cousin-the 8800GTS. This will
be priced a couple of thousands lower.

What is your gameplan for making PCs SLI ready?

We have tied-up with Reliance World to promote the concept of SLI machines. An
SLI PC is one where there are two GPUs on a single motherboard, that increase
its output and performance. This is especially important for cyber cafes or LAN
gaming parlors, where customers demand better graphics and faster speeds all the
time. And a lot of PC makers are now building SLI machines.

We are also educating partners and customers on how to make their systems SLI
ready, with minimal investment.

VINITA BHATIA