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“Up
is the only direction to go,” says Ashish Kumar, vice
president-sales, IBM India. He’s talking about the SME
segment which has seen a pause after years of frenzied growth.
Despite the present lull, sales to SMEs account for over 50
percent of IBM India’s revenues in 2001. “Depending
on who you rely on, analysts are predicting anywhere between
8-13 percent growth in this space in 2002, making it one of
the fastest growing segments in the country.” The bulk
of growth in this segment is a result of the low penetration
as against upgrades by SMEs who have already gone ahead and
made use of IT.
“We
changed our focus 3-4 years back to heavily focus on SMEs.
The market perception hasn’t changed as rapidly but our
focus certainly has,” adds Kumar. The switch wasn’t
very dramatic since IBM found that SMEs wanted much the same
thing that larger customers did. “The scale of investment
may be smaller, but the value proposition is the same,”
he adds. The only challenge? Distribution. Which is why second
tier partners are a big focus area for Big Blue right now.
The company plans to expand its reach from a few hundred to
a few thousand in the next year. Another key thrust area is
to recruit service partners in smaller cities.
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KUMAR
says IBM is looking for more second-tier partners
thanks to the SME focus |
The
other ace up IBM’s sleeve has been its Pondicherry facility
that has allowed it to tailor price and configuration even
for relatively smaller volumes in India.
With 40 percent of PCs going to SMEs and that segment slated
to climb to 60 percent by 2004 as per IDC, it’s not surprising
that Kumar believes that SMEs will be the sustaining wave
for IBM India.
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