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| Yogesh
Kamat |
Making
aggressive inroads into the Indian market almost a year-and-half
back, hard disk drive (HDD) major Maxtor International has
put India high on its agenda for the Asia Pacific market.
India and China are the two markets the company has shortlisted
for focus in the APAC over the next one year.
As
part of its increasing focus on India, Maxtor has recently
appointed marketing representatives for three region North,
South and West, in order to interact with the channels. Declining
to give a time frame for the establishment of a direct presence
in the country through a liaison office or subsidiary, Yogesh
Kamat, sales manager, Indian subcontinent, Maxtor, informed
that this move on the cards and that the company is studying
the market closely. The company is in the process of finalising
a major deal with a PC vendor on the OEM business front, which
will be announced next month.
The time frame for setting up the India office will depend
on growth in the Indian market. Maxtor has gained considerable
momentum in the Indian market in the last four quarters. Presently,
India ranks number three in Maxtor’s HDD business in
APAC, the first two markets being, China and Korea. For the
time being, the necessary thrust is going to be provided by
third-party marketing representatives focusing exclusively
on Maxtor. “With a growing market, these representatives
will essentially help in interacting with the channels and
managing relationships with them,” said Kamat.
As part of its India strategy for 2003, Maxtor will be focusing
more on the white box market after having ramped-up on the
OEM front last year. Moving forward, Maxtor will be targeting
the white box segment while continuing to strengthen its hold
on the OEMs. Said Kamat, “The key initiative last year
was positioning Maxtor as a leading supplier. Now we will
be showcasing the OEM success to grab the channel market.”
explained Kamat. Last year the company invested significantly
into building the Maxtor brand in the country and an OEM presence.
This year the company will continue its investments in the
Indian business in the areas of marketing, with the main focus
on channels and technical support. The present proportion
of Maxtor’s business volumes in India stands at 60 percent
from channel and 20 percent each from Indian and global OEMs.
The local OEM partners of Maxtor include HCL, Wipro, Vintron,
PCS, Cerebra and recently LG for its new ‘My PC range’.
On the products front, the company will be launching Serial
ATA (SATA), the next generation ATA interface, which provides
faster data transfer speeds, more bandwidth, more potential
for speed increases in future generations and better data
integrity. Serial ATA hardware is smaller and more compact
than traditional parallel ATA components. A powerful command
set and hot plug features make SATA very attractive for ATA
RAID applications.
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