“We are the only vendor to offer a 30-day money back policy for a wide range of our products. But this is not a marketing tool for us”

Jayant Gundewar does several things as the Chief Strategies Officer. He
has a mandate to come up with at least four new projects every quarter, seek new
alliances, identify trends, which can then culminate into business. While he is
busy keeping all these balls in the air, he also works with the R&D team on the
design for upcoming products and meeting customers to get feedback on what new
innovations they would like to see

How do you identify the right business projects to work on?

Every quarter, we try to zero in on four projects. In some cases, we
identify companies who will manufacture these products and in other cases we
work with our in house R&D team to bring out the product ourselves.

Currently we are looking at coming out with some new models of UPS and how
the go to market strategy should be. Here we try to see how we can take a simple
power solution and turn it into a lifestyle product. We managed to do that with
TOP UPS.

But how do you fixate on which product you need to introduce in the
market?

Earlier, a lot of companies would come out with products and then push those
to the customers. We have a slightly different approach. We go the customers,
find out what features they expect from a product, work with our research team
to put in as many of these features in the machine and then take it to market.

There is a lot of data mining that is done and we often go to market with two
or three beta products. Then depending on the feedback we might continue or
discontinue the product line.

Of course, this approach increases the product life cycle before it can be
launched. But in most cases, we are able to match the needs of the customers and
the long schedule is compensated by good sales.

Jayant Gundewar Chief Strategies Officer, Wipro ePeripherals

Customer expectations might vary. How is it possible to meet most of these
expectations and ensure that it is viable to develop a product aligned with user
aspirations?

There have been instances where customers expect impossible things, like
10-hour backup on a UPS. We try to match at least 60 percent of our customer
expectations. Also, while we work on four odd projects a quarter, usually only
one is finally launched after we see if it has market viability.

Can you give an example of one product that was created based on customer
feedback and launched successfully?

Several customers wanted a good quality dot matrix printer with higher
speeds and lesser noise. They always mentioned that it would be a huge black
machine, which they did not like to keep on their sales counter. This is why we
came out with a translucent DMP in dual tones.

Initially, we were not sure whether we should commercially launch this
product and almost dropped it. Then we saw good feedback from retailers and the
hospitality companies who liked to have a colorful printer on their sales
counter and it has been doing good business since.

How do you decide which of these products should be built in house and
which ones should be manufactured by external agencies?

In most cases, we see if there is a company that has the technology to
manufacture a particular product and if it can Indianize the product to suit
local requirements. If some company can fit all these requirements and it is
cost effective for us, we commission them to manufacture for us. Otherwise, we
work with our internal resources to develop the machine ourselves.

It is difficult to manufacture in India. It is much easier to import a
product from somewhere, put your company sticker on it and sell it here as your
own. But we prefer not to work like this and try and localize the product to
suit the needs of the people in India.

There was talk about restructuring within WeP. Can you throw some light on
this?

We have four key business areas: printing, information manage­ment which
includes security, products that we sell through the tier-three channel and
products for the enterprise segment, which requires a lot of integration. Now we
are integrating all these products and instead appointing one account manager
who will take all of these offerings to the customer. Now the customer will have
a single WeP interface.

How well entrenched in your printing business in India?

We have a whole range of printing solutions, but it is ironically more well
known overseas than in India. Now, we are moving from printing as a
product-oriented business to a service-oriented one.

In services, downtime is not acceptable, because it is critical to a whole
host of other assorted services. Therefore we have put in place an entire system
to ensure that customers do not have any downtime.

What are the warranty policies do you have in place?

We have levels of warranty policies in place. There is the Express
replacement warranty, where we replace products within 24 hours. We also offer a
30-day money back policy for most of our products, where customers can use a
product and then give it back no questions asked, if they don't like it and take
a refund.

This is a unique service policy.

Yes, it is. We are the only vendor to offer a 30-day money back policy for a
wide range of our products. This is not a marketing tool for us. Rather it is a
customer protection tool.

In India, users are often taken for a ride. There are several Chinese brands
which comes into the market and offer one-year warranty. But at the end of that
year, they themselves vanish from the market, so where will the customer go for
service.

What is the rate of product returns that you get under this policy?

Actually it is less than single digit, percentage-wise. Even when we first
started this concept five years ago, it was never in the double-digit
percentage. This shows that we underestimated the Indian customers. My
experience tells me that they are the best in the world.

Is there any disclaimer for reasons why the customer returns the product?

No, this is a no question asked policy. But the product should not be
damaged. In fact we even have customers returning the product saying they did
not like its color and we have actually taken it back too. And these products
are a total write off since they can't be resold.

But offering such a policy shows the customer the conviction we have in our
products. It shows them that we are confident in its quality and this builds a
comfort level when they consider purchasing it.

Vinita Bhatia

vinitavs@cybermedia.co.in