D-Link to market Gigabyte range

Circuit EC / Mumbai

K R Naik

D-Link India has signed an MoU (memorandum of understanding) with Gigabyte Technology, a Taiwan-based motherboard and VGA manufacturer, to promote their joint venture company Digi Giga Systems in India. D-Link will be the major stakeholder in the new company.

The joint venture will initially focus on marketing, distributing and servicing motherboards, which will be sold under the brand name Gigabyte in India. But the new company will also deal in more Gigabyte products in India.

The company, which currently distributes around 25-30,000 motherboards a month, has a 20 percent share in the market. But with the agreement in place D-Link will be manufacturing a minimum of 40,000 units a month at its manufacturing facility in Goa. D-Link has bought two companies in Goa for a sum of Rs 2 crore. The companies, located close to its plant in Goa, are expected to enable D-Link to scale up its manufacturing capabilities.

Said K R Naik, managing director for D-Link India, “The main objective of the partnership is to develop a technology relationship between the two companies. The earlier agreement with Gigabyte did not provide D-Link with any additional technological advantages. But Gigabyte was impressed with our state-of-the-art facilities in Goa. Hence they have decided to outsource some of their R&D work to our centre here. This will enable D-Link in technology learning.”

Digi Giga plans to capture a minimum of 30 percent share of the motherboard market in the first year of operations. Other than this the company will be launching a range of Gigabyte products like add-on cards and peripherals in the near future.