With the help of distributors, Yogesh Kamath, Sales Manager, Maxtor
International, wants to create direct programs for resellers and end-users.
Yogesh has already made a headstart in the OEM segment by targeting companies
like HCL, Wipro, Vintron, Zenith and PCS. He is currently focusing on smaller
cities to increase the Maxtor brand awareness. Yogesh started his career at
Onida, before moving on to ACI Infocom.
An MBA by qualification, he tells DQCI exactly how he plans to go about
increasing the marketshare for Maxtor in the country.
Maxtor HDDs have not been very visible in the Indian market and you have
stiff competition in Seagate and Samsung. How do you plan to face the market
situation?
It has only been a year since we began our Indian operations. Prior to this,
Quantum HDDs were sold here. But as you know, Maxtor took over Quantum last
year. But somehow we were not very focussed on the Indian market.
|
However this year, we are re-entering the Indian market. Our major focus will
be on channel partners, importers and A and B-class cities. Once we get the
mindshare of these people, we will get the marketshare too.
How do you propose to get the mindshare?
We have formulated three stages for our re-entry into the Indian market. In
the first phase we have targeted OEMs like HCL, Wipro, PCS, Vintron and Zenith.
We have been very successful in this endeavor so far.
Next we targeted A-class cities. We had dealer events in Mumbai, Delhi and
Bangalore and the response was very good. Most of the importers have started
buying material from us.
Now we are planning to go to the B-class cities. IDC reports confirm our
theory that we need to tap business potential of small cities to push our way
up. We will also be focusing on the high-end products, which are technologically
superior.
What initiatives has the company taken towards bettering its focus on the
Indian market?
We recently conducted a series of roadshows in Chennai, Hyderabad and Pune.
This was in line with our strategy to expand in B and C-class cities and to
reach out to more resellers. Roadshows have been an excellent platform for us to
showcase our products, communicate with our prospective business partners and
understand the market well. We received a phenomenal response to these roadshows
and hope to conduct more in other cities soon.
For end-users, we recently announced a promotional program ‘Find the
Diamond in the DiamondMax’. Every end-user buying a PC from Maxtor’s OEM
partners–namely Wipro, PCS, Vintron and Cerbera – with a built-in Maxtor HDD,
stands the chance to be one of the three lucky winners of a brilliant and
exquisite diamond each.
Do you have direct reseller programs or do your distributors create their
own individual programs?
Though we have three national distributors, we do get involved in channel
activities. We are planning to create direct programs for our resellers and
end-users. But all these will be done through our distributors.
Each of our distributors has his unique strength. Some of them are very
strong with importers, while some are strong with their partner network
nationwide. Using these strengths we can uniquely position ourselves to make
Maxtor products available throughout India.
What is the service and support model that you plan to establish in India?
It is a common knowledge in India that Maxtor is a technologically superior
product. So we are going to leverage this knowledge to our advantage. We will
also be working with our distributors to offer service to customers. Every
distributor has his own way of going about this. So we will be depending more on
them and will be backing them all the way.
For instance, Cyberstar has its own service centers for Maxtor in Bangladesh
and Sri Lanka. This is like Cyberstar warranty and is largely sought after in
Bangladesh. This is also another reason why we have a terrific market share in
these two countries.
This is the kind of success we would like to replicate in India. Ingram Micro
has started offering end-user warranty, so that the resellers job is made
easier. So whatever it takes for us to support this initiative, we will go one
step ahead in helping them.
Do you have any plans to set up your own independent service center?
At the moment, no. We will not do this. We feel that a sale is a package of
pre-sale, post-sale and warranty package. There will be people who might be
willing to pay less for the post-sale warranty, others might be willing to pay
more as long as they get complete warranty. So this varies from distributor to
distributor. So we ask the distributor to make the sale and offer service that
is of internationally accepted standards and we will continue to support them.
Why does Maxtor still not have a direct presence in India?
A lot of debate has taken place about this within Maxtor. Today we feel that
all the three distributors we have, Ingram Micro, Karma (or Esys) and Cyberstar,
are based out of Singapore. The head office of Maxtor India is in Singapore. It
is easier to get the co-ordination done if the decision-makers in distribution
companies are in the same area. Moreover, we think of our distributors as our
extended arm in India. I make frequent visits in India and am close to all the
resellers in India. So we feel that it is not very important to have an office
in India.
Has the rebate center on Maxtor International’s web site been extended
to the Indian partners yet?
We have not officially launched that web function for our partners in
Asia-Pacific.
What is Maxtor’s marketshare in India?
As Maxtor is relatively new to the Indian market, official local statistics
on our marketshare in the region is not yet available.
However, according to Gartner Dataquest, Maxtor has a worldwide marketshare
of over 30 percent in the desktop HDD market.
What is Maxtor’s marketshare in the OEM space?
Maxtor has a significant share in the Indian OEM PC segment. Though I cannot
give you figures, currently we are happy with the progress made and are
relatively successful in meeting our targets. In India we have partnered with
leading local OEMs like HCL, Vintron, PCS, Wipro and Cerbera. But now we want to
widen the base through our involvement with assemblers. In 2002, our focus will
be on three areas, namely resellers, systems integrators and OEMs.
VINITA BHATIA in Mumbai