Sensing the growth potential in the Indian market and refocusing its strategy after taking over Quantum last year, hard disk drive (HDD) major Maxtor is aiming to establish itself as a significant player in India—in league with vendors like Samsung and Seagate—in a year’s time.

According to Yogesh Kamat, sales manager at Maxtor for the Indian subcontinent, while the Quantum takeover has helped the company in increasing market share globally it is yet to replicate the same success in the Indian scenario. Maxtor has now divided its business strategy into two phases, which will not only help it focus on its present OEM and channel partners on a monthly basis, but also help increase sales and reseller figures. For the first phase, Maxtor is not only optimistically eyeing the assembler segment, but has also been successful in building strong partnerships with OEM players like HCL, Vintron, Wipro, Servera and PCS. Zenith will join this list soon.

However, it is the second phase (starting from June) which Maxtor feels will help it reap benefits both in terms of expansion and increase in revenues. This phase will see Maxtor expanding to ‘B’ class cities. To start with, the company will target cities like Chennai, Pune, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Udaipur and Agra and build direct relations with resellers in these cities. With distributors like Ingram Micro, Cyberstar and Karma, the company also plans to lay more stress on direct rebate programmes for channel partners. Though Kamat admits that competition is tough with Seagate and Samsung having already established themselves as brands to be reckoned with, he claims quality and technology innovation will be Maxtor’s USP in the Indian market.