Gigabyte to ship1 million mobos by Dec 2004

Digi Giga Systems, in a tie-up between Taiwan-based Gigabyte and DLink India,
will ship one million motherboards, by the end of December 2004. Rajan Sharma,
Product Manager (Motherboards), Digi Giga Systems is confident that the company
can touch this milestone in less than three years since it started operations.
Digi Giga has already shipped over 8.5 lakh mobos in India already.

Digi Giga managed to boost sales of its Gigabyte mobos by coming up with
back-to-back channel schemes. For the current OND quarter, it is running a
scratch-card promotion, where resellers can encash every point that they gather
on the scratch cards for gifts.

Distributors who sell the mobos to resellers will also get points and 50% of
these points will be reimbursed in gold coins. For example, if a distributor
gathers 10,000 points, he will get gold valued at Rs 5,000.

Another ongoing scheme is where Digi Giga is bundling its Gigabyte AMD mobos
for VIA chipsets with ATI nVidia graphic cards. "Mobos and graphic cards
share a symbiotic relationship, which is why we came up with this
promotion," explained Rajan. Digi Giga will soon bundle its AMD-based mobos
with VGA cards. The reason the company is running several programs parallely it
to ensure that its partners win good prizes through one, or more, schemes.
"We are making sure that our entire range is being promoted, rather than
just one product," added Rajan.

Besides mobos and graphic cards, Digi Giga recently introduced optical disk
drives in the Indian market. This will be followed with the launch of other PC
products and components in the coming fiscal. "We have a whole range of
products, which we want to bring into the country. But we would like to
consolidate our brand and channel more firmly, before we take the plunge,"
said Rajan.

VINITA BHATIA