"We are going to do a lot of work in terms of recruiting and retaining key partners”

According to Hitachi, laying thrust on branding in the channel space by
initiating channel loyalty programs will help them garner huge marketshare in
India. Beside this, the company also aspires to distinguish itself by focusing
on newer verticals like security, surveillance, SMEs and non-branded servers
among others

What prompted Hitachi to appoint a new Country Manager?

We think, leadership is important for our India strategy. We have a certain
plan for our APAC market, which will help us to go deep and wide in terms of
recruiting new channel partners, and gaining both customer and partner loyalty.
Besides, we can look at new business opportu­nities and business verticals like
security and surveillance, small business, networking servers, etc. All this
will need a local and dedicated sales and marketing team. This apart, we also
felt the need to be close to our worldwide and local OEM customers, who are
boosting our manufacturing operations in India. This initiative will not only
support the channel, but also help us to further our high-quality hard drives in
various applications right across the country.

Which countries from Asia-Pacific are major contributors to Hitachi's
marketshare ?

Both China and India are of prime importance to us, as far as the
marketshare is concerned. They are both the largest emerging markets for IT
products and usage. However, our major share come from China. APAC accounts for
almost 40 percent of the worldwide units for Hitachi's global storage and if you
look at China, over half the world's production is coming from China for OEM
products.

How similar and different are India and China in terms of competition?

In both the countries, the fastest growing segments are the 2, 3 and 4-tier
cities, and the metropolitan areas. Both countries have big verticals like
surveillance and security. Also, both have seen tremendous growth in areas like
infrastructure and aviation. However, when it comes to software development and
BPOs, India clearly scores over China.

What opportunities are you looking forward to in India?

With the OEM expanding in India, there will be a lot more opportunities for
us. So all our big customers will continue to take more marketshare in India,
and because they are very well-positioned, we will try to have an enhanced
presence in all these companies. Beyond that, it is more about the system
builders and the channels in India. We also see a good opportunity of working
with PC builders and system integrators in the country.

Robert Chu VP-APAC,Hitachi GST

Hitachi GST also sees a huge market in consumer electronic applications, such
as digital set-top boxes, digital video recorders and personal video recorders
because they are generating demand for high-capacity hard drives. To capture
this market opportunity, Hitachi GST launched the Deskstar 7K1000 family, and
the CinemaStar family of drives address the growing demand in the CE segment,
with capacity of upto 1TB.

Apart from this, we have to distinguish ourselves and this will work like
newer verticals. These verticals include security, surveillance, SMEs,
non-branded servers, home storage opportunities, small businesses, and storage
and networking. We would like to partner with companies in the networking space
like Cisco, Linksys, etc. We will also look at creating a strong channel base
and also want to collaborate with them. So we will look at expanding
geographically as well as get into newer verticals.

How do you view competition from Seagate and Western Digital?

We respect our competitors and India being a huge market, each one of us has
large scope to grow and make profits. Hitachi is already a leader in two and a
half inch HDD market, and beyond that, we need to leverage on OEMs, branding and
create awareness. Also, it is about channel loyalty and recruiting more
partners. This will happen in India in the 3 and 4-tier cities. So we are going
to do a lot of work in terms of recruiting and retaining key partners. We will
do that by introducing some strong product portfolio as well as strengthen our
OEM tie-ups.

Elaborate on your branding initiatives.

We are going to do a lot of branding in the channel space. We will start a
channel loyalty program. This has already been started in China and launched in
other countries in APAC. In the next eight to nine months, there will be some
programs for India as well. This program is all about providing resellers with
award points for motivating them to do business with Hitachi. So five years down
the line, we would like to see Hitachi in the number one position.

What future trends do you see in HDD market industry?

The notion of one hard drive per IT user is a passé, and most users now have
atleast two to three hard drives with them. Going by this trend, most users will
get more advanced and

IT-savvy. So the number of hard drives per IT user is going to increase.

In terms of technology, if you look at Web 2.0, the key application is video.
So companies such as YouTube and My Space are using video to differentiate
themselves. Since video consumes a very large amount of hard drives, these
Internet providers will use more and more hard drives to fill the demand and
storage requirements of their community of users. This is going to bring a lot
of opportunities our way.

Pooja Sharma

poojas@cybermedia.co.in