CHENNAI DELHI KOLKATA MUMBAI

National Supplement - Personal Storage

Feb 25-March 3, 2013

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From floppy drives to cloud Strorage

SANDHYA MALHOTRANew Delhi, February 26

Personal storage is something that everyone needs, be it, students, professionals or businessmen. Everyone uses a pen drive to transfer data, movies or music. A

microSD card and memory cards serve the same purpose for cell phones and cameras, respectively.

The industry has grown tremendously over the years and it’s so convenient to carry everything you need with you, wherever you go. Thanks to the growing mobile phone industry in India and better PC penetration, the demand for personal flash storage has grown greatly over the past year. Flash storage has also become more afford-able making it a preferred choice of personal storage.

Today, there is about 2.7 zettabytes — that’s 2.7 billion terabytes — of digital information in the world! With most of this information being user-generated video, music and pictures, no wonder most of our data today lives on our social networks.

With the influx of portable music players, digital cam-eras, mobile phones, Personal Mobile Players, etc., users today carry GBs of storage with them at any point of time. These are sufficed by some key mediums like flash cards, portable HDDs, USB flash drives etc, that allow users to use and transfer data from one medium to another.

The growth has been massive and according to industry estimates, there are more than 3 lakh units of external HDDs, some 10 lakh USB drives and an equally large number of flash cards are being sold.

Personal storage has also transformed into a big time gifting segment and today a large number of corporate do with customized shaped and size USB drives according to their needs.

The Indian storage market is poised to keep evolving for the next couple of years with external HDDs being the prime to keep attracting new and exciting features. USB drives looks to be becoming more of a handy device for storing personal files will keep attracting new features including that of security as well.

Personal Cloud storage is also another thing that is likely to give higher revenues to the partners. In the external drives storage, with higher capacities like 1TB and above, are likely to gain market share in the coming quarters, the focus will be to make these drives Wi-Fi enabled, so as to have better accessibility.

Paradigm shift in personal storage devicesStorage devices have come a long way from the ancient

times of 8 Kb floppy disks to the first hard disk drives to pen drives storing data as little as 256MB. Today with the shrinking physical size of flash memory devices and

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the Solid State Drive revolution, devices can store more and more data within comparatively smaller space. The true evolution of storage devices still lies in the Cloud Storage revolution.

Despite the shortage, storage vendors like Seagate, Western Digital and Iomega are bringing out innovative technology products such as media players that work as a unified storage medium for all digital gadgets and can be accessed as a wireless network drive for the digital home.

Customers today are more discerning and demand-ing than ever before — they not only want their storage devices to be fast but also look out for products that are visually appealing.

Until very recently the market had seen greater demand for 2GB and 4GB USB drives and flash memory cards as compared to any other capacities. Over the past couple of years, we’ve seen a greater demand for higher capac-ity drives – 8GB and 16GB. This is partly due to the fact that flash memory has also become more affordable to the regular consumer. Consumers are also looking for smaller sized, faster drives and Kingston has accordingly responded with exciting innovations and designs.

Flash card marketThe overall Indian flash cards market outlook con-

tinues to be positive on account of the high growth forecast for sales of mobile phones and healthy growth expected in sales of digital cameras in 2011 and beyond.

“The growth of the India flash cards market closely follows the growth of mobile handset and digital camera shipments. The increasing penetration of mobile phones and digital cameras will ensure a strong year-on-year growth for the flash cards market,” stated Nikhil Khurana, lead analyst, IT Peripherals, CyberMedia Research Info-tech Practice. Mobile phone being used as an enter-tainment device, as an amateur digital camera and as a social networking hub by more and more Indians translates into higher demand for flash cards. In fact, today’s new generation smartphones are actually becoming increasingly powerful handheld computers and driving the adoption of micro SD cards to store and share photos, games, music and video clips etc.

Flash drive marketIn flash drive market, vendors have introduced new

concepts such as pre-loaded movies and anti-virus pack-ages to woo customers for flash drives. The demand for high capacity drives has increased continuously, with 4GB and 8GB form factors are more in surge.

Over the past couple of years, factors like social media,

digital convergence, improved broadband connectivity and the launch of 3G services have given an impetus to the consumer storage market. As a result, the external storage market is witnessing strong growth,” says Sumanta Mukherjee, GM, research and consulting, Computing and IT Peripherals, CMR India.

Portable hard drivesBy industry estimates, the external storage market in

India clocked approximately ̀ 1,680 crore and is expected to double by 2016. Despite the blip in the HDD market due to the shortage created by floods in Thailand, the external HDD market grew by a good 30 percent from 1.4 million units in 2010 to 1.83 million units, and contrib-uted roughly `450 crore.

The portable flash drive (USB drive) market recorded unit sales of 18.7 million during the same period, aggregating to a market size of ̀ 470 crore, while the flash card market sold close to 41 million units to rake in `760 crore.

The new segment that is slowly picking up amongst the elite and technology enthusiasts is the SSDs ( Solid State Drives) against the conventional HDD segment. In spite of being extremely fast and low in power consumption, it is yet to penetrate markets in a big way because of prices being higher and little awareness amongst the channels as well as end customers.

But SSDs as an alternate for faster storage medium is gain-ing momentum and we have been observing an upward trend not only from metros but also from upcountry markets. For partners focusing on storage, SSDs are the new buzzword that is giving a healthy bottom line.

Solid state drives, due to the push from companies like Transcend and Kingston, are gaining traction in certain segments. The recent HDD shortage seems to have pro-vided it some push in the market.

Storage devices have come a long way from floppy disks to those on the cloudThe SSD market in India is in its nascent stage and is

driven mostly by the corporate segment and professionals. Prices of SSDs have dropped in the last couple of years, but they still command a huge premium over HDDs.

A 128 GB SSD was priced at ̀ 15,000 a year back and is now available at below `10,000. However, it would still be 15 times overpriced if compared to a similar capacity HDD. While the prices will fall further in 2012, the prices will still be nowhere near the per GB cost of HDD, and will remain beyond the reach of the average consumer,” according to a memory expert.

Vendors such as Kingston, Strontium, Transcend, Iomega and SanDisk are focusing on creating awareness among corporate and professional users.

Cloud storageAs the usage of digital content is growing, customers today

look for anytime anywhere access, sharing and streaming of the stored data. To meet such a requirement, many companies offer cloud solutions. Some of the popular online storage solutions are Google drive, Dropbox, SugarSync, InSync, Apple iCloud, Skydrive, AVG LiveKive etc. These solutions empowers users to bring all their content together in one place, including music, photos, video and documents stored on PCs, Android/iOS based tablets/Smartphones etc and allow easy access and streaming of stored content on their Internet-connected devices.

FinallyWith the growing cloud service adoption, tie ups

between hardware providers and cloud service providers and shortages in memory devices, the market will swiftly turn to cloud services and this change will definitely be the future for most of the data storage needs. Wonder, the shift may pose threat to pen drives or memory cards?

Lenovo strengthens storage portfolio with IomegaDQW NEWS BUREAU

New Delhi, February 26

Lenovo and EMC Corporation has entered into a partnership that will enhance Lenovo’s position in industry standard servers and networked storage

solutions, while significantly expanding EMC’s reach in China and other key, high-growth markets.

The new tie-up is expected to spark innovation and additional R&D in the server and storage markets by maxi-mizing the product development talents and resources at both companies, while driving scale and efficiency in the partners' respective supply chains.

The move is a strong strategic fit, leveraging the two leading companies’ respective strengths, across three main areas:

First, Lenovo and EMC have formed a server technol-ogy development program that will accelerate and extend Lenovo’s capabilities in the x86 industry-standard server segment. These servers will be brought to market by Lenovo and embedded into selected EMC storage systems over time.

Second, the companies have forged an OEM and reseller relationship in which Lenovo will provide EMC’s industry-leading networked storage solutions to its customers, initially in China and expanding into other global markets in step with the ongoing development of its server business.

Also, EMC and Lenovo plan to bring certain assets and resources from EMC’s Iomega business into a new joint venture which will provide Network Attached Storage (NAS) systems to small/medium businesses (SMB) and distributed enterprise sites.

“The move is another solid step in our journey to build on our foundation in PCs and become a leader in the new PC-plus era,” said Yuanqing Yang, chairman and CEO, Lenovo. “This partnership will help us fully deliver on our PC-plus strategy by giving us strong back-end capa-bilities and business foundation in servers and storage, in addition to our already strong position in devices. EMC is the perfect partner to help us fully realize the PC-plus opportunity in the long term,” he added.

Joe Tucci, chairman and CEO of EMC, said, “The rela-tionship with Lenovo represents a powerful opportunity for EMC to significantly expand our presence in China, a vibrant and very important market, and extend it to other parts of the world over time. Lenovo has clearly demon-strated its ability to apply its considerable resources and expertise not only to enter, but to lead major market seg-ments. We’re excited to partner with Lenovo as we focus our combined energies serving a broader range of custom-ers with industry-leading storage and server solutions.”

In the joint venture, Lenovo will contribute cash, while EMC will contribute certain assets and resources of Iomega. Upon closing, Lenovo will hold a majority interest in the new joint venture.

Evolution of personal storage

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V E N D O R C H A N N E L S T R A T E G I E SNATHAN SU

sales director, Flash product line, APAC region, Kingston

I think we will see some really exciting develop-ments over the next couple of years. There is so

much more to tap in the Indian market, particularly in the smaller towns and cities. I think as PC pen-etration increases, as internet connectivity improves and as there is greater awareness about newer tech-nologies like SSD, the personal storage market will grow manifold. We at Kingston are excited about the forthcoming years and we plan to present the market with several exciting new products and innovations in the personal storage space.

Segment-wise, our products can be classified as USB flash drives, flash cards and SSDs. We further classify our flash drives as consumer USB drives and secure flash drives that as mentioned previously, are hardware encrypted for greater security. Then we have microSD cards that are for cell phone storage – these are available in capacities up to 64GB. We also have a variety of photo and video storage cards for the ever-growing photography enthusiast community. With excellent speeds and capacities up to128GB, there’s a wide variety for both photography professionals and enthusiasts. Additionally we have an exciting range of SSDs for consumers and tech enthusiasts. For daily use, there are the V+200 and V300 SSDNow series available in capacities up to 240GB. For enthusiasts, we have SSDs with blazing speeds like the HyperX and HyperX 3K series with capacity up to 480GB. SSD technology is something we strongly believe is a technology for the future, thanks to its excellent performance, speed and durability. Also as already mentioned we have the new Wi-Drive for users of Android and Apple devices. This will also be particularly useful for the growing number of tablet users. A perfect example of Kingston’s innova-tion and creativity is the recently launched Wi-Drive for Android and Apple devices. As you probably know, Apple devices have limited storage capacities so the Wi-Drive offers users extended storage of up to 128GB that can be shared between a maximum of three users at any given point of time. Likewise, when Windows 8 launched last year, we introduced the new DataTraveler Workspace in association with Microsoft, which is perfectly compatible with the Windows To Go feature on Windows 8. This makes the Windows To Go drive an ideal choice for a mobile workforce. Also the increasing concern over data thefts and the growing need to protect sensitive information make Kingston’s wide range of secure USB flash drives even more rel-evant. Unlike several other secure drives available in the market, Kingston’s secure flash drives come with hardware encryption making data theft impossible.

RAJESH KHURANAcountry manager, India and Saarc,

Vietnam,Phillipines, Seagate Technology

We see clear signs of growth in every aspect. The enterprise demand for data storage and protection

continues to grow. In addition, cloud computing and virtualisation, consumerisation, mobile and wireless technology, growth of personal media content like videos, pictures and music, are all signaling more opportunities for storage. The past few years have shown an explosive requirement for storage, both at enterprise and consumer levels. Growing digital lifestyles and exploding enterprise data drives growth across all segments, though personal (consumer) storage segment has really come of age. These are global trends and mirrored in Indian market too. Sea-gate sees tremendous potential in markets like India. We are listening to our customers and partners in every local market and are committed to working closely with them to deliver the best-in-class storage solutions for the market needs. Seagate has also been considering the importance of the brand and what it stands for. We will aggressively drive our communications to raise our brand recognition and help our customers understand Seagate’s technology, product leadership and innovations. This will continue to help customers to know that Seagate products stand for high quality and creativity. Seagate will continue to intro-duce market leading products and technologies as per the need of the market. Customers are always looking for hard drives that provide the best combination of capacity, speed and reliability, meeting the level of performance required by ever-growing digital content. When customers generate highly personal, irreplaceable content, such as photos and videos, they need simple to use, comprehensive, secure storage solutions that can help safeguard that content.

KHALID WANIsales director, branded products, India, ME &

Africa, Western Digital

The rising demand for capacity and storage-on-the-go will fuel growth, signs of which are being

seen in current market trends. We are witnessing improved sales of high-capacity portable drives, while 500 GB drives are still the volume drivers in the segment. There are a growing number of takers for NAS based drives in the home segment, who are opting for these devices to centralize and share data created by multiple users on the network.

Consumers are increasingly opting for one-stop solutions that can take care of their storage, stream-ing as well as sharing needs with the convenience of a single, compact and easy-to-use storage device. Sales from LFRs and e-retail have witnessed a healthy boost in recent times but the channel still owns the major share of the pie. WD has a base of 3000+ channel partners across India. We have tie-ups with 5 national distributors who help us address the demand from metros and smaller cities through their country-wide partner bases. Global Infonet, Jupiter, Ingram Micro and Redington distribute our entire range, while Neoteric only distributes products from the branded range. WD’s branded range, or external and home entertain-ment products are also sold through leading LFRs like Croma.

The channel plays a crucial role in helping us penetrate further into tier II / III cities. WD invests considerably in training its partners. Our regional teams frequently interface with partners through various brand and relationship building exercises. It is a challenge to manage the expectations of dis-tributors, partners and customers in a fragmented market like India. The focus of our channel strategy is predominantly on ensuring product availability in upcountry markets and creating incentives for partners that deliver good business. We have a quarterly review wherein we evaluate the latest insights from the channel on pricing, availability, SKUs and other critical market factors that may affect a partners’ business. We are able to focus equally well on all verticals that we are present in, courtesy of our distribution set-up. Normally, it is the portable range that generates high sales vol-umes. However, we have also specialist distribu-tors that have an expertise in pushing products in the SMB or enterprise segment.

DEEPAK DEVESHWAR head retail and consumer business,

Buffalo India

The personal storage industry has grown in direct proportion with the volume of digital content

accumulated by an ever growing population of tech savvy consumers. With so many new gad-gets, offering content heavy digital entertainment, computing, telephony, gaming, audio/video etc., coming into the market, there is a quantum jump in the demand for personal storage devices either to store or share data.

Buffalo offers portable storage devices. In addi-tion, the company also offers external storage devices including consumer NAS devices.

In the personal storage products, end customers primary look for speed, reliability, compatibility, and convenience. The cost per gigabyte of data stored defines customer choices in this market. Given the low internet broadband speeds in our country, cloud based solutions are still not main-stream, although they are getting there.

For the positioning of these products, we have a robust go to market strategy. Currently, we are showcasing and selling these product categories through LFR and Buffalo's exclusive stores along with consumer channel, soon we will be making these products available through major online players.

SUDIP DE VP, ADATA Technology

ADATA in the last one year has been very aggressive in reaching out to the partners and increasing the foot hold in the market. Our DRAMs, external HDDs and USB flash

cards have been receiving good response from the channels. We are yet to be present in the top slots of the personal storage seg-ments, but with niche features like shockproof, waterproof, and slimmest HDDs we have made good inroads in the market. In USB drives also, we not only have all our USB drives with USB 3.0 interface but some very innovative and customer friendly designs to attract all segments of customers base. The key products of which ADATA does business in India are USB flash drives, external HDDs, SSDs, flash Cards and DRAM memory modules. As mentioned earlier the technological trends observed are faster medium, innovative features (like waterproof, shockproof, one touch back up button, slim models for External HDDs) (USB 3.0 connectivity, stylish looks, higher capacity, bundling of free AV and storage management software common for both USB drives and external HDDs). On the channel front, ADATA has a multi-pronged strategy for its range of products in India. We have National as well as regional distribution model. For External HDDs and USB drives we have 4 regional distributors — 1 each in region. For DRAM, we have two national distributors i.e. Rashi Peripherals and Compuage Infocom. SSD the new upcoming segment is being catered by both the regional distributors and System Integrators (SIs) for their project business in for kiosks and small form factor PCs.

We have a large population of gadget savvy and digital lifestyle enthusiasts. This large user base means that the market for personal storage devices will only grow here.

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V E N D O R C H A N N E L S T R A T E G I E S

GORDON WUregional head, South Asia, Transcend

Information

Transcend Information last year registered 20% growth. It did 123.4 mn sales in 2012, wherein this year, we have plans to see 30% growth. Currently, India stands among top 5 countries for our global business, across Asia Pacific.

It contributes 1/3rd of the revenue. To continue our focus and commitment, we will invest on brand activities.Largely driven by the conventional channel sales, which constitute three national and regional distributors, the company

is now aggressively looking at capturing online sales and customers touch points. This year, we will be enhancing brand awareness by decorating dealers shop with promotional kits. Last year we started this activity and covered 20 shops, this year we would cover 150 shops located at the convention IT trade markets in top A-class cities. In 2012, Transcend product portfolio did fairly well, globally, its flash cards contributes 38.2% revenue, followed by 19.8% USB flash drives, industrial product did 16.7% business, standard memory modules 11.5% and strategic product did 13.8%.

In India, Transcends sells 1 mn pieces of memory cards in a month, 4 lakh units of flash drives in a month; it sells more than 1.5 lakh of DRAM, 10,000 units of hard drives, and 5,000 units of MP3 on a monthly basis. The other line of business, which is picking up fast for the company is online sales. Presently it contributes 5% of revenue. It hopes to double its online business with the entry of Amazon in India. Apart from this, it is also increasing its corporate, SIs, industrial and LFRs business.

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C H A N N E L P A R T N E R P R O F I L E SSURESH PANSARI, MD, RASHI PERIPHERALS

Rashi has been on the upswing throughout FY12 both literally as well as figuratively. While literally

it showed in its cash registers, figuratively shifting to a new sprawling office was a big endorsement of the growing clout of this Mumbai-based ND. Geographical expansion has always been the forte of Rashi and FY12 was no exception with new setups in Jalandhar, Agra, Vashi. In fact, in terms of depth of penetration, Rashi is now in the league of Redington and Ingram (present in 64 locations): it is present in even C and D class cities. Even the successful conduct of its Channel Business Forum roadshows across 51 cities throughout the country was a testimonial to Rashi’s strong national presence. In fact, this CB aacounted for nearly 10% growth in Rashi’s overall topline for the year.

For Rashi , growth in share of the mobile & notebooks business,as well as the ramp up activities by Asus (note-book business) proved the major highlights. FY12 was even the witness to addition of new vendors including the likes of LG and NVIDIA. In terms of revenues, Asus was the #1 contributor to the overall kitty followed by Sandisk and Lenovo. Due to dollar appreciation and hard disk scarcity, the components business was hit to a certain extent. There was the highest geographical contribution from the north region (31%) which reflected in its decision to open 3-4 branches in North India. Non-metro locations in fact contributed about 60% of its revenues. The com-pany plans to balance its components and PC business and invest in infrastructure and manpower.

MANOJ GUPTA, CEO, FORTUNE MARKETING

Fortune Marketing had seen a stupendous growth last year. The company did excellent in surveillance and

storage space, Fortune grew its gross revenue to `480 crore in FY12. Both premium and entry-level ranges of storage products performed very well for the company. Flash drive distribution business also grew by close to 50%. Norton business only grew by 20% in the last fis-cal. Despite the hard drive crisis, its hard drive business also performed fairly well with 15% growth in FY12. A well established player for CCTV, Fortune grabbed the order for Bhopal City Surveillance for Infinova range of products with one of its system integrator. Bhopal city surveillance project consist of 80 IP cameras at different junctions to make the city secure. Fortune is the one stop sources for IP camera system, networking and data stor-age solutions. Large turnkey projects and big SI engage-ments continues to be the key growth accelerators.

Last year, Strontium Technology appointed Fortune Marketing as its national distributor in India and ven-tured into DRAM. Right now the company does not have any DRAM product offerings and addition of Strontium DRAM and Flash products to its portfolio filled that gap. Another growth trigger was the uptake in SSD adoption.

Its partnership with Kingston SSDs, HP flash drive and PNY vendors fitted perfectly its portfolio of quality storage offerings for its resellers and SI partners in India. Fortune Marketing harness almost 94% of the business through the resellers and dealers, and a small portion is done from small and medium enterprises, govern-ment and retailers. Further expanding its presence in the country, Fortune opened new branch offices and expanded its distribution network and opened its office in Raipur, Chattisgarh last year. Currently, the company

has 18 offices across India.Moreover, the company is also eying to capture the C

and D-class cities where the sales of networking prod-ucts, laptops and peripherals have witnessed a growth. Along with driving the hard drives and surveillance products, Fortune Marketing is also focusing on its own brand. As a result, April 2009 onwards, the company has been promoting products under its own brand including USB, MP3, MP4, Bluetooth, headphones and others.

New blood seems to have paid off well for Lalani Info-tech which registered a growth rate of 20% last FY,

thanks to its repositioning and ongoing endeavors taken up by Umang Lalani, director, Lalani and son of KL Lalani. Compared to FY 10- 11, Lalani Infotech has outgrown its performance over verticals and brand positioning and has worked effectively over its tie-ups and new business projects. Necessarily an eastern player focused on busi-ness only in the Orissa-West Bengal-North East region, the company has performed exceedingly well especially in the office automation vertical together with the printing portfolio. Its entire revenue comes in from the eastern region only. Unlike its previous strategies (FY 09-10, FY 10-11) of maintaining few vendors in its list, this year, the company unleashed a series of new ventures add-ing Dascom, Reliance, Airtel, Tata Communications and Samsung in the list. Extensive plans has been laid out for the new venture with Dascom. However, Lalani Infotech seems to be shifting from the mainstream IT and moving towards telecom and mobility space alongwith an added focus over automation. The consolidation process was over by October 2011 after which Lalani Infotech has focused on new appointments and branch expansions in new geographies.

However, the company is keen to maintain its eastern focus instead of opting to go for other regions and is in no mood to increase its manpower this FY. The consolidation process, as per the business strategy of Lalani Infotech ensured that the topline remains pertinent and worked on the bottomline in a unique way.

With major focus on HP, Dell and AOC besides its regular interest in Canon and Fullmark, the new brand additions are likely to take the topline this FY to an esti-mated `250 crore. The company has considerably con-centrated on its own peripheral brand, Kanry expanding the product base to include specialty office products like

KL LALANI, CEO, LALANI INFOTECH

document laminators, paper shredders and other automa-tion products. While HP continues to contribute to 25% of its revenue with AOC sharing the next chunk at an estimated 10%, Canon, Tata Teleservices and Panasonic continues to feature as the primary product-lines.

In terms of its financial break-up, Lalani Infotech, like most of the eastern companies had a good Q4 earning `59.8 crore followed by Q2 at `56.4 crore. The other 2 quarters were evenly spread. Direct distribution revenue (ie direct retailer or reseller billing), however, comprised of 50% of its total earnings dipping this year by a few points.

VISHNU KUMAR BHANDARI, CEO, SUPERTRON ELECTRONICSrevenues from Supercomp accounting for `23.52 crore of the aggregate turnover.

Dell, previously appointed Supertron as a national distributor for their printer, server and projector business; last fiscal it added projectors to its kitty. Acer, however, continued with their range of netbooks and e-machines. In terms of its bottomline, the primary brands have been IBM and Seagate. Seagate and IBM, taken together accounts for an estimated 41% of the topline too. Maintaining its focus primarily on channels and distribution, Supertron continues with its faith in the national distribution model and is in no mood to enter any retailing or reselling busi-ness this year too. However, Supertron is now focusing on its Delhi branch to come of age and handle major deals although the company headquarters will continue to be in Kolkata.

Major geographies for SEL continues to be at par with the market with the southern region featuring as the prime contributor at 30.44% followed by the western region at 26.72% and north at `300.46 crore. East continued to lose the geographical share (internally) registering at 17.58% contribution to the topline. Direct channels bill-ing remained at 97.32% of the total deals, however, the company earned some percentage shares from billing to the SOHO, BFSI, government, telecom and ITeS segments totaling `29.57 crore. However, the mean share for these segments to the topline fell this year by - 3.52% signal-ing its increased focus towards direct channels billing. While 90% of its annual business came in from its major dealings with the IT vendors, its own brand revenue from Solitaire and Supercomp comprised of nearly `331 crore in FY11; a significant number considering the state of imports and brands

This time again, Supertron Electronics maintained its stability in the distribution circle, its topline

growing at par with the market. The new tie-ups with IT hardware majors such as Dell for its projectors range and Buffalo has paved the way to increase its revenues up further this fiscal. Supertron remained a strong Dell and Acer player with Dell accounting for 25% of the total revenue with the later taking up ̀ 297.25 crore pie in the topline. Seagate, like last year remained the thirdmost important brand for SEL contributing `238 crore with Transcend, Digilite and other vendors taking up minor slots. However, its revenue from its own brand still continued to feature as a bottomline contributor with

KETAN C PATEL, CEO, CREATIVE PERIPHERALS & DISTRIBUTION AJAY SINGHANIA, MD, VENKTRON DIGITAL SYSTEMS

Mumbai-based Creative Peripherals & Distribu-tion had entered the DQ Channels Gold Club

only last year and since then, consistent performance has yielded the right results for the distribution firm. The company witnessed a marginal growth in terms of overall revenue wherein it closed its books at `150 crore as compared to previous fiscal’s `145 crore. One of the key reasons for the performance is the tapping of right opportunities in the right segment. The company has revenues coming in from all quarters including distribution business, corporate, OEM and large format retail (LFR) business. LFR is relatively a new addition to its bandwagon. In addition, the distributor over the period has shown the ability to import, distribute and retail products while catering to different verticals. Also, it has efficiently reached to each level in the value chain. Furthermore, to aid to its business it has a unique facility of small feeder warehouse in retail areas, for example a warehouse at lamington road where a majority of retailers are present.

The company’s growth can also be attributed to extremely flexible business terms which suits every fragmented retail partner and system integrator. Today, the distributor has a diverse product range consisting of monitors, hardware, memories and printers and is associated with major brands. The most recent addition being Forward Industries which appointed Creative as its national distributor for the organized retail chains

Venktron Digital Systems has been operating in the industry for more than two decades and is one of the

leading distributors of the western region. Its entire rev-enue comes from the distribution and sales business. In the last fiscal, the company’s overall revenue dropped by `13 crore. The distributor had a tumultuous year wherein its financials dropped and faced an import related issue with Dell. In the latter case, it went in the favor of the distributor as the commissioner of customs, Mumbai, directed Dell India to compensate the distributor by pay-ing demurrage and warehousing charge.

On the business front, the company is gearing up and is now strategizing to get back in the groove. The distributor has a significant pan-India presence with more than 15 direct branches and tie ups with more than 200 dealers. The vendor has plans to further enhance its presence across the country. The distributor is working out plans to expand its channel network by the end of this fiscal and the focus region would be on B, C, and D-class cities. As of today, the majority of its revenues come from western and southern India which accounts for more than 60%. The company also has plans to add more products to its existing portfolio. In the last fiscal, the distributor added Iomega products to its portfolio with rights to sell it across India.

Venktron’s clientele consists of well known dealers in IT Industry, corporate, educational institutions and government enterprises apart from end users from all over the country. The distribution firm is working out strategies to aid its plan

and LFR across India. Besides, the distributor is work-ing out its expansion plans into B and C class cities.

to further expand its national footprint to cover all urban centers in India by establishing more branches and creating suitable partnerships. However, the new additions would be purely based on industry demands.

DUSHYANT MEHTA, MD & CEO, MEDIAMAN INFOTECHnew business unit for solution based projects this year. Cur-rently, majority of the business if driven by distribution, and very little is coming from solu-tion. In the current year, the company is building its capa-bilities for taking up projects like Wi-Fi and retail solutions. In the current financial year, the company has decided to increase its focus on server and gaming motherboards. It is also getting into networking business in a big way and will soon tie-up with networking companies.

Mediaman’s flagship Transcend business, a 20 year old association, sells 1 mn micro cards in a month and 3,00,000 units of pendrives. Since the distributor has launched its own line of products, it would be interest-ing to see in the current year how the company fares in the competitive market.

One of the other highlights of the year include a 130 city channel connect initiative Sone ki Chidiya. Media-man identifies and extends business support to Green Environment companies. Moving forward, it sees greater business opportunities in cloud computing in the com-ing decades.

For Mumbai based Mediaman Infotech, FY12 was an eventful year. This was the time when the company

introduced its own brand of flash products, including MediaMan micro SD cards and SD cards for cameras, and got into the gaming segment. The company has been growing consistently at 10%. The Mediaman group of companies recorded a revenue of ̀ 424 crore in FY12. Moreover, it has projected a `488 crore revenue for FY13. The major chunk of its revenue came from Transcend’s flash cards, drives, MP3 players, hard drives, and mobile accessories. Mediaman Infotech has introduced its own range of flash products in the market. The launched products, Class 10 cards, are high-speed cards for professional photographers; and flash drive and flash cards for smartphones (8 GB, 16 GB, 32 GB, and 64 GB). It is already among the oldest and strongest distributors for Transcend’s memory products.

Mediaman has been in the industry of flash products for the last 20 years. It has a robust network of channel spread across India and has its own offices in major cities. Moreover, the company intends to expand its own brand outside India. It is also expected that the company will introduce its pendrives in the second phase. In the last fiscal, it tied up with ASRock for its gaming motherboards. In addition, it is starting a

ATUL H MEHTA, MD, COMPUAGE INFOCOM

It was a well-balanced year for Compuage in the last fiscal—the distribution of both hardware and software

products with 23 principal alliances—took the company to a remarkable position in the Indian market. FY12 witnessed good performance in Q2 (27%) and Q4 (29%) but marked a fall in ranking. Registering consistency throughout the year, Compuage had a considerable turn-out of `316.70 crore in the AMJ quarter, `427.84 in JAS, `390.72 crore in OND, and `462.48 crore in the JFM 2012 quarter. If taken a look at the region-wise revenue of the company, North contributed the most with ̀ 505.68 crore, followed by South with ̀ 500.41 crore, West with ̀ 419.56 crore, and the rest from East with `172.09 crore.

A system-oriented and process-driven company, the hallmark for Compuage has been its strong IT enabled distribution backbone, a solid financial and inventory management system, a young and dynamic sales team, and a committed channel spread across the country. Currently, it has more than 7,500 dealer network along with 61 branch offices that cover all the regions across the country. At the top of it, the company has made its branch offices fully equipped to provide efficient and adequate service support to the channel partners and the other target segments.

Also, the company’s design and development center in Mumbai that caters to its own brand line of UPS,

called Odyssey, has been quite well accepted in the market. In fact, Odyssey UPS has given some serious competition to the big players in the Indian market. In the last fiscal, Fox-conn appointed Compuage as exclusive distributor with an aim to capture around 10% of the Indian motherboard market by end 2012. By strengthening its relationship with this OEM manufacturer, Compuage has further reaffirmed its commitment to the computer hardware industry in the country. Along with Foxconn motherboards, Compuage also intends to provide a diversified product portfolio such as Nettops, All-In-One computers, and full OEM desktop systems among others to the Indian market.

For better penetration in the Eastern region, AOC also appointed Compuage as its ND in the few regions of the eastern part of the country. Regional distributors of Ranchi, Patna, and Odisha have been replaced by Com-puage. Meanwhile, Edifier International also partnered with Compuage to distribute consumer electronic and multimedia products including PC, multimedia, docking, IT, and home audio in the Indian market.

P E R S O N A L S T O R A G Ewww.dqweek.comFeb 25-March 3, 2013

The DQ Week 5

Agra - 6453125, 4041027, Ahmedabad - 64508450, 26851663, Amritsar - 6450186, Aurangabad - 645 7141, Bangalore - 65687567, Baroda - 6595588, Bhopal - 6464925, Bhubneshwar - 6510444, Calicut - 6515152, Chandigarh - 6512547, 2694932, Chennai – 64501273,28412414, Cochin - 2205051/52/53, Coimbatore - 6572160, Dehradun - 6546333, Delhi - 64734905, 26387897, Ghaziabad - 6517809, Goa - 6514657, Gurgaon - 6453544, Guwahati - 9207411634, Hubli - 6453123, Hyderabad - 66901598, Indore - 6510124, Jabalpur - 6457306, Jaipur - 6577844, 2280421, Jammu - 2437478, Kanpur- 9235601410, Karnal - 6450508, Kolhapur- 9223101332, Kolkatta- 64517248, 22315174, Kottayam - 6452013, Lucknow - 6546333, 2286134, Ludhiana - 6512545, 6450125, Madurai - 6463839, Mangalore - 6451030, 2494355, Mumbai – 65261670,65990329, Nagpur - 6502571, 2420009, Nasik - 6450103, Parwanoo- 645108, Patna - 6453850, 6450116, Pondicherry - 6530470, Pune - 65205706, 24497489, Raipur - 6538333, 4221307, Rajkot - 6593588, Ranchi - 6455499, Siliguri - 6450108, Surat - 6596267, Trivendrum - 6535433, Varanasi - 6454820,Vijaywada - 6622872, Vizag - 6590992.

Cabinets, Keyboards, Mice, Headphones, TV Tuner,USB Speakers, Multimedia Speakers, SMPS, UPS, Webcam & more !

www.dqweek.comFeb 25-March 3, 2013The DQ Week6 P E R S O N A L S T O R A G E

“Stop illegal sale of counterfeit memory products”

Over the last few years, consumers are taking more pictures, listening to more music, recording and watching more videos and saving more personal

memories on mobile devices. The rate of change has been really incredible; hence, the demand for portable storage devices is on the rise. Flash memory has become an integral part of the mobile storage industry in India – most of the sleekest devices including smartphones and tablets rely on flash memory. SanDisk, a global leader in flash memory cards, is catering to this market within India and is providing consumers’ innovative and high-quality products that help them enjoy a smart digital lifestyle. SanDisk has played an important role in furthering the growth of flash memory in India.

COUNTERFEIT MEMORYHowever, with this sudden growth in demand by con-

sumers comes the rise of counterfeit memory and imaging cards which are being sold to unsuspecting consumers throughout the country by unscrupulous dealers in large volumes. This brings the need to raise awareness amongst consumers of this trend in order to stem the spread of this unlawful practice.

As an industry leader, SanDisk is actively involved in curbing the distribution of counterfeit products across markets where it is present. This not only protects con-sumers from false products that don’t work as advertised, but also protects the interests of authorized partners. Just recently, SanDisk conducted a number of raids across the Lajpat Rai IT market in New Delhi. A team of specialists inspected premises of shops for any products bearing “SanDisk” trademarks to identify and seize counterfeits. The raid team found not only large stocks of counterfeit SanDisk products but also counterfeit SanDisk packaging material. The counterfeit stock was seized and sealed in boxes under the Local Commissioner’s signatures. Appropriate legal action is expected to be taken against the offenders.

As a global leader who greatly cares about provid-ing high quality products to its customers, SanDisk combats counterfeiting and intellectual property theft using various means at its disposal. Active engagement with law enforcement and anti-counterfeiting organiza-tions is helping to prevent these crimes and reduce the chance that consumers will receive counterfeit prod-ucts. the recent raids at prominent locations in New Delhi underscore the company’s efforts to ensure that authentic products are offered to consumers.

MAKE AN INFORMED BUYING DECISION

The Indian audience understands technology well and SanDisk is rightly placed to offer high-capacity, high-perfor-mance flash memory products to consumers.

The only way to get a legitimate product is to buy from authorized outlets and make sure the product is

Kingston—always standing up for qualityOver the years, Kingston has taken dramatic steps to stay

true to genuine, quality products and to control the influx of counterfeit and grey imports

You have probably seen a number of fake USB flash drives and microSD cards at your nearest railway station or in your neighborhood store.

The grey/fake market is nothing new to India—in fact not just India, but also several other economies across the globe. But today, this market has reached epic proportions to the point where all of us need to stop and think about how we are going to control it in our country. We all have read about the recent smuggling case of SD cards at Delhi’s international airport that were worth Rs 1.3 crore. When you read about incidents like these, it actually sheds light on the fact that this is not an issue that we can ignore.

Kingston has been in India for over 6 years, and during this time it has established itself as a brand that stands for true, genuine quality. There are two main concerns that we have observed—the market of fake products that is rampant throughout the country, and the market of grey imports that actually threaten a brand’s reputation. We have put in place a system where all of our flash products go through stringent quality checks before they are sold.

We also have a strong RMA policy when it comes to fake products. We first test them to make sure they are genuine and only once that has been established do we replace them. We have often observed that other players in the market are happy to replace fake products, which only spurs the fake market further. Likewise, we always advise customers to insist on an invoice each time they buy a product. This helps us to keep track of dealers that sell counterfeit prod-ucts. In doing so, we also protect our distributors and channel partners who are doing their business in a fair way. We strongly believe that they should not suffer because of the fake or grey market existence. Kingston sometimes gets bulk orders from consumers who want grey/cheaper products, but we decline because there is honor in the business we do. We do not look at volumes and market share alone. We want our brand to be recog-nized as the one that stands for ethics and quality.

Kingston was also the only brand that teamed up with the Delhi police last year to conduct a raid at Delhi’s Palika Bazaar to get rid of the fake products’ vendors. Moreover, we have been the ones to consistently raise our voices against these practices because they cause inconvenience to consumers and more importantly, they result in a chaotic market. We have also started putting MRP stickers on all our products with website and dis-

Avnet to distribute HGST storage

products in India and Saarc

DQW NEWS BUREAUNew Delhi, February 26

HGST, now a West -ern Digital company, announced the appoint-

ment of Avnet Technology Solutions (Avnet) as a new authorized distributor for HGST storage products, expanding its reach in India and the sub-con-tinent (Saarc). As part of this agreement, Avnet will distrib-ute the company's enterprise and mobile drives, and Touro external storage solutions in India and the Saarc region. The new alliance with Avnet gives customers a broad range of high-quality, reliable HDD and SSD solutions for a broad range of enterprise, cloud, personal storage, consumer electronics and notebook applications.

"We are delighted to part-ner with Avnet to expand our network in India and the Saarc region, and offer our broad product portfolio of personal storage solutions, SSDs and HDDs that enable innovative storage solutions, technologies and products for several new and existing market segments," said Raman Yeung, MD, Asia Pacific channel business, HGST. "With our growing customer base and demand, this collaboration will help us build strong relationships and will help extend our leadership position in new markets, benefiting extensively from Avnet's outstanding expertise and network of resellers," he added.

"We are pleased to offer HGST's range of solutions to help them strengthen their presence in India and the Saarc region. As a premier technology solutions distributor in India, we are constantly redefining technology distribution for our customers. Empowered by our people and our values, we will accelerate HGST business in India and the subcontinent, and strengthen their footprint in the region by leveraging our successful relationships with customers, suppliers and partners," said Jaideep Malhotra, VP and GM, Avnet Computing Components, Asia Pacific.

Avnet will distribute the following HGST products:

# Ultrastar SSDs and HDDs# Travelstar HDDs# Touro external storage solutions

Jaideep Malhotra, VP and GM, Avnet Computing Components, Asia Pacific

contained in a sealed pack. To help consumers buy genuine SanDisk products, SanDisk has introduced product packaging that makes it easy to recognize an original branded SanDisk product from a counterfeit one. The new packaging is designed to enhance the

customer experience. With prominence of SanDisk logo on the packaging and clarity of product capac-ity and class helps consumers make a more informed buying decision.

Being ahead of the curve has always been a key com-

ponent of SanDisk's strategy. The company’s goal is to continue offering Indian consumers high-quality products that help them do more with their digital devices.

The article was authored by SanDisk spokesperson.

tributor information, so that consumers can distinguish the real from the fake. Through our initiatives, we have gotten rid of over 90% of fake Kingston products in the Indian market. Also, our website has a form that allows customers to register complaints about counterfeit products (http://legacy.kingston.com/company/counterfeit.asp). Likewise, users can ensure that they have purchased a genuine product by verifying it on our website, http://legacy.kingston.com/asia/verify/default.asp

Kingston wants to safeguard the interests of its consumers and ensures that they get nothing less than the best. We have often seen brands encouraging grey imports in the market while also selling through legitimate channels. This is not the approach that Kingston chooses. We know that our method may not result in an instant growth in the market share, but we remain committed to creating a market based on integrity.

The article was authored by Kingston Technology spokesperson.

P E R S O N A L S T O R A G Ewww.dqweek.comFeb 25-March 3, 2013

The DQ Week 7

www.dqweek.com

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N E W S Feb 25-March 3, 2013The DQ Week8 P E R S O N A L S T O R A G E