“We have decided to have our own RMA center in India”

Andrew Tsui feels that the setting up of RMA centers in the country will help
to beef up their service network. That is why they have plans to have a facility
in Maharashtra on the outskirts of Mumbai

The one big issue that has been hounding Asus for sometime is your
post-sales service? What are you doing about this?

Yes, we are aware that we need to beef up our service network. That is why we
have decided to have our own RMA centers in the country now. We have drawn up
plans to have a facility in Maharashtra on the outskirts of Mumbai. We hope it
to be functional by April this year. Later, we will have another RMA center in
the country.

What will be the capacity of the Maharashtra facility?

It will produce around 5,000 motherboards every month. As our channel partners
are trained to offer the first level of support. So only those motherboards that
need a higher level of support will be escalated to the RMA center. And some of
the motherboards that we get are in such a condition that we can't even
consider repair.

Andrew Tsui MD, Asus India

What is the turnaround time at your service center?

We have a maximum turnaround time of seven days. We often receive mobos with a
big hole and then have to simply replace it. We don't take such cases. But
when the motherboard has to be repaired for complex problems, then it takes a
few days.

What's on your agenda this fiscal?

There are several things in the pipeline. For one, we will be launching a PDA
mobile handset priced around Rs 35,000. We will also be introducing a very
low-cost computing device, which will have just the display, a keyboard and
flash memory with several connectivity ports.

If it is Flash memory-based, then there are not many applications that can
be loaded on the system, right?

Yes. If a customer wants any additional applications, he can just plug it in. So
if he needs memory, he can add an external hard disk drive.

How will this be a low-cost machine then, if a customer has to pay for
every additional feature? This will ultimately escalate the price of the
computing device as that of any contemporary PC?

Well, the concept of just a computing device is catching on. And we are making
it possible. The beauty of this device is that a customer can decide what
applications and utilities he wants to add on to it and then he can simply load
those, rather than have to do with the vendor-decided specifications.

Do you think the channel can play a very important role in the mobile
phone industry? Because, mobile users are pretty much specific of what they
want, unlike a PC customer who will take the channel's opinion while making a
purchase decision.

To start with, we are not selling just another mobile handset. What we are
offering customers is a PDA that is also a mobile. In India, there are not many
PDA customers. So our job is to make the end-customer and the channel understand
the PDA's technology first and then let them decide whether our product makes
sense to them. Ultimately, not everyone makes purchase decisions only keeping in
mind price.

Also we will not be going through the GSM route of coming out with a product and
then simply dumping it on our channel. Instead we will generate interest about
the technology and then bring in the products.

But are there not a lot of issues related to security of a PDA phone?

Absolutely. Even if you are using a normal phone today, people are at some kind
of a security risk. Unless both ends of the users have a decoded phone, this
risk will continue to be present. And the only outfits that use these
unscrambled phones are CIA, FBI and other security agencies.

So have you equipped your phones with any embedded security software?

For the phone, right now we have a hardware lock with a password lock. That way
the data within the phone is safeguarded. At the same time, if you want to use
the phone with the hardware lock, that will be Rs 13,000 more. The normal phone
is priced around Rs 35,000.

But you have to agree that one reason why the PDA phone has not been a
great success in India is the price factor.

Yes. Last year India sold around 25,000 PDA phones, which is around 0.3 percent
of the global PDA phone sales. Dubai contributes almost nine percent of the
world's PDA sales. But if you look at it realistically, we found that 40
percent Indians buy PDA phones from Dubai or other cities out of India. So the
actual sales in India are hard to define.

I think people, who are using this handset, are not price conscious. They are
traveling and simply want access all the time for getting their work done. A PDA
phone is a synonym for a customer's desktop.

So what channel structure will you employ for selling your mobile phones?

We are in the process of appointing a distributor who will then have its own
network of partners. Also, we did consider tying up with some GSM service
providers for offering our mobile handsets with their services. But right now,
we are a very small player and till we can show them that we can deliver good
sales, it will take a lot of convincing to partner with them.

- VINITA BHATIA