“We will grow 3 times in the next 2 months in India”–Subhasish Gupta

As a networking solutions company, what are the new products you have come up with?
Allied Telesis has been a pioneer in a number of technologies in the converged network space. In the last 2 years, we have launched a host of products to address the enterprise and the growing SMB space. Our products have been developed keeping in mind the increasing relevance of convergence of services on the IP platform. All the products are built on IEEE standards. We have launched a suite of products in the Fast Ethernet to the 10G platform offering the best kind of flexibility and scalability for mid to large-sized enterprises and also for telco grade customers.

In the broad sense, what is your perspective on the Indian networking market?
As the market matures, there is a certain element of business that gets commoditized. The same has happened to some extent in the Indian networking industry too. However, with enterprise needs getting more and more complex and the demand of multiple services now getting converged on the IP platform, I do not think that the networking business can get commoditized at this stage. It is a specialized area and requires a huge amount of experience and skill-sets to build robust, scalable networks.
Today, even malls and large MDUs are building their services on IP platform and this requires definite design skill-sets. One of the areas where Allied Telesis excels is this large space, and the customer very well appreciates our approach, solution offerings and the RoIs presented to them.

Allied Telesis has seen phenomenal consolidation and addition of customers from various verticals in the past 5 years. It has been a consuming, but very satisfying experience to be a part of Allied Telesis, and I firmly believe that we are a well-established networking brand in India, featuring amongst the top 5. IDC-India reports in the past multiple quarters also authenticate the same.

We are focusing big time on expanding our channels and simultaneously working on upgrading their skill-sets. Having said that, I believe that we have a long way to go, and Allied Telesis is taking a focused approach to address the market and get a bigger pie in the years to come in India.

Do you have solutions tailored for the Indian market needs?
Allied Telesis is one of the very few OEMs that still believes in its own manufacturing and development. India is one of the focus markets for Allied Telesis. We work very closely with our customers and backwards with our development centers. On need basis, we get into customizing certain products/solutions to the Indian market/customer needs.

What are your plans to tap the Indian market?
Allied Telesis has big plans for India in the next 3-5 years. We will be almost 3 times the strength in the next 2 months in India. We have already been able to build a strong base of strategic partners. As a strong initiative, we would be enhancing the partner base to close to 250 focused partners in the next 1 year across the country.

Multiple channel focused initiatives are being rolled out in the coming quarters. We have enlarged our vertical and horizontal market focus and today have customers spread out in education, government, transport, defense, media, manufacturing, power, and steel verticals. Healthcare is a vertical that we want to get into aggressively in the coming years in India. In Japan, we have one of the largest healthcare customer deployments. For healthcare, IP networks become a very critical component and Allied Telesis with its highly intelligent solutions and a close customer approach has been chosen most often over competition.

What is your marketing strategy in India?
High channel focus supported with interesting and innovative reward programs will be a part of our strategy for the upcoming year. Focus on specific verticals in the heavy engineering and design will continue. We are also working with our counterparts in the US and Europe to bring in our much appreciated certifications into the country to tap the education space.
Also, building a stronger ecosystem by getting into complimentary vendor associations to address verticals that are now moving from a non-IP to an IP based environment would be another area of interest.

Please discuss your distribution model.
Hundred percent of our business happens through channels. We have always believed in a value added distribution model and the same will continue. We are looking at enhancing our existing distribution network, as this will be the key for driving our channel initiatives as well as penetration into the smaller and remote markets across the country.