“We want to satisfy our customers”

Palit might not be as famous as its closest competitors like Asus and
Gigabyte, but this is not worrying Penn. Infact, he is satisfied with the fact
that his brand is familiar to the channel. The company is now working on having
a series of roadshows to get more partners acquainted with Palit and its
products as a brand

Throw some light on your India presence

Nearly three years ago, we were present in India through our partner Techcom,
but later we decided to part ways. This is why we have signed up

two new distributors-SMC and Mediaman.

Why did you part ways with Techcom?

The service offered by Techcom was not of the standard promised to us. Also,
we wanted a company that had a national presence and bandwidth to sell our
graphic cards as well as motherboards. Hence we appointed SMC and Mediaman.

Would you consider making presence in India directly or through channel?

As of now, we will be present in India through our distributors and channel
partners. Until our channel matures and becomes more defined, we will continue
working through our distributors. As of now, we have our service and sales team
for this purpose.

Werner Penn Regional Sales Manager-Indian Subcontinent, Middle East and Africa, Palit Microsystems

Won't Palit's low brand recall in India pose a challenge to your channel?

I don't think Palit has a low brand recall. We are not trying to make our
products known to the end-customers as much as we are trying to educate the
channel about us. We are planning to have a series of roadshows in association
with SMC and Mediaman to increase our brand awareness.

Which product line are you focusing more on in India-graphics or
motherboards?

Right now, our attention is more on the promotion of our graphic cards.
Unlike Asus and Gigabyte, we are focusing only on two product lines, as we want
to ensure our customer satisfaction.

India is a price-sensitive market and you are also trying to entrench
yourself. Will you leverage on cost to do this?

Yes, we will ensure our products are priced very competitively. Worldwide we
are the number three manufacturer of graphic cards. We have our own factory in
China; therefore the economies of scale work in our benefit. We can ship
products to our customers within three days, while other vendors take at least a
month.

How will you ensure that the service issues, faced by Palit in the past,
are not repeated?

We know that local service is crucial if we want to survive in the Indian
market. This is where we will co-operate with our distributors. We will train
their service engineers and also send them for higher training to our China
factory.

Right now, all our products have a repair warranty, and defective products
are sent to our return material authorization (RMA) center in Hong Kong. But we
will work with our local partners to build their service capabilities. Over
time, we might even appoint a third-party service provider, and have our own
service center in India as well.

VINITA BHATIA

vinitavs@cybermedia.co.in