"The new range of notebooks with face recognition technology would give the user a secure and reliable computing experience while also creating great traction in the Indian market"

Lenovo’s Anil Philip is excited about the ‘Y’ series of
notebooks and feels innovation into products like these will help Lenovo garner a greater
mind share of both customers as well as partners in India

Lenovo has launched the ‘Y’ series of notebooks. What are the
new features in this range?

Lenovo’s new range of feature rich notebooks cater to the needs of the home as well
as SOHO customers here in India. The new Lenovo Y300 and Y500 notebooks incorporate
biometric face recognition technology that enhances data security and allows the notebooks
to be used by multiple users seamlessly. The Y500 has advanced Dolby Home Theater, a
shuttle center for easy navigation between features, a slot-in ODD and a TV tuner card
that make it useful for multimedia enthusiasts. The face recognition feature incorporated
into the new Lenovo notebooks is supported by Veriface software, which recognizes multiple
users and logs onto the windows operating system and other applications without requiring
users to remember passwords. In the event of an unauthorized attempt, the notebook
captures the user’s photo and stores the image in a log for verification.

The integrated Dolby Home Theater that is in built into the notebook
allows listeners to feel their favorite music, movies, and games and enjoy surround sound
experiences in a variety
of playback environments. For listeners who enjoy music or movies late at night, the
Lenovo Y500 offers virtual surround sound over any set of headphones. For listeners at
home who need a simple, inexpensive way to enhance their entertainment, the notebook
delivers virtual surround sound using just two speakers.

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Anil Philip Director—Transaction Business, Lenovo India

What are some of the marketing initiatives you have used for the new
range of notebooks?

Given the segment of users targeted for the new range, we have been conducting a number of
pre-launch as well as post-launch promotion events for customers as well as the channel.
As part of the pre-launch activities we met partners across different cities in the
country and opened bookings for them before launch. This exercise got us an amazing
response and we had nearly 3,000 bookings from just six cities before launch. Additionally
partners were given an offer for the day whereby we gave away the new notebooks as gifts
for the bookings done on a particular day. The idea behind this exercise was to
demonstrate and share the new technology experience that this range of notebooks is offers
to users.

As part of the second phase of this exercise we will now meet up with
partners across 10 to 14 cities that include metros, mini metros and other cities like
Cochin and Chandigarh and share with them the benefits of the new product range.

We are also working on our advertisement as well as other branding
campaigns. In a customer promotion campaign called ‘Face to Face’ lucky buyers
of the 3,000 product line would get a dinner invitation with Lenovo brand
ambassador—Saif Ali Khan. In a similar campaign for partners, the top 10 partners
would be flown to a destination where they would meet Khan in person. These and related
endeavors would continue in the future also.

What kind of training would you provide your partners for the new
products?

Our regular training on web casts and e-mails apart, we have begun a new initiative
whereby we hire ‘activation managers’ to train and enable our partners to help
them sell out to their customers. Partners would be given training in groups as well as at
their retail outlets so that they can improvise on their skill sets and increase their
sellouts. From providing demo units and hands-on training to planning full-scale partner
events, we are doing everything in our ability to help partners sell better. Similar
programs, which would provide half-dayhands-on training, have been planned for our sales
team also.

Recent times have seen a greater focus from Lenovo on retail. What is on
anvil for the year ahead?

True, from less than 40 exclusive outlets last year we have more than 80 exclusive Lenovo
outlets across the country today. We are hoping to reach 100 outlets by the end of the
fiscal, which would be March 2007. Additionally we are looking to ramp up these outlets in
terms of look and feel. Given that the traction on our products is pretty high, many of
our partners are expressing an interest to open more than one exclusive outlet in
different parts of their city or town.

Already present in more than 300 cities, we would be looking to add our
presence to at least 100 more cities by the end of this fiscal. Exclusive outlets apart,
we are also working on increasing our multi-brand outlets in the country. In fact we
already have more than 500 such outlets and hope this number would increase in the coming
months.

What are your other plans for Indian market in the coming months?

Our focus on retail would increase and we would look to expansion through numbers as also
better branding in both our exclusive and multi-brand outlets. Smaller retailers would be
given branding kits to help them sell better. While increasing investment on the
‘activation managers’, we are also looking to incorporate telesales and tele
coverage for the channel partners. Through this exercise our team would get to meet
channel partners in person and talk to them over telephone to give them updates on new
products, trainings, as well as update them on the leads that we generate, besides helping
partners on their claim settlement and other related processes.

We also have on the anvil many partner events that would serve as a
platform for new partner sign ups in the future. By Traveling across various cities to
meet partners, we would be able to get a good feedback on the need for changes as regards
our products and/or business policies. All this we believe, is a key to our endeavor to
improve innovation in the future.

Subbalakshmi BM