Desi laptop vendors ready to face competition

With MNC products made duty free, stiff competition awaits between indigenous
and MNC laptop vendors. The enforcement of WTO guidelines after being the hot
topic of discussions for more than a year, will finally come into place in
January 2005. The import duty on all products being brought to India will be
scrapped off. As a result, all MNC products that are imported will not be
charged a duty, thus offering customers a slash of prices.

This also translates into more competition between the indigenous and MNC
laptop vendors. Most indigenous manufacturers have one common way to combat this
competition that is yet to come. They all plan to hike up the value-adds in the
laptops they pro-vide. "We plan to bundle up a couple of things with the
laptops and also have immediate after-sales service," said R Manikandan, LG's
Deputy GM, Sales and Marketing of IT products.

LG also plans to come up with a one year and three-year warranty for the
laptops as well as setting up a 24 by 7 call center support to answer the
queried of end-users. Kamlesh Nehlani of Panatron, who is into making assembled
laptops, shares a similar opinion. He said that one has to find more USPs of
their pro-ducts to remain profitable. "We intend to give a fully loaded
laptop at the cost of an entry-level laptop of an MNC," he added.

While some other desi manufacturers like Devita Saraf, Director (Marketing)
of Zenith Computers feel that vendors will have to compete not just on the price
factor, but for quality and service as well. She said that cost-conscious buyers
would be looking for the latter more than the price. "Since Zenith laptops
already cost lower than laptops of MNCs, we will have value-adds for our
machines. These value-adds will be done when the market becomes more
competitive," she remarked.

CI News Bureau