Buffalo: Coming to an IT hub near you

In a bid to enhance its presence in the country, Buffalo Inc is turning its
attention on the IT hubs in metros. Speaking about their plan, Susumu Kobayashi,
Country Manager, Buffalo Inc said, “India is a huge potential for us and we are
looking at growing our presence here. Our current main focus is to target the
channel in Nehru Place (New Delhi), Lamington Road (Mumbai) and SV Road (Bengaluru).
80-90 percent of our customers are from these regions. We will also be focusing
on LFRs such as Staples and Croma.”

Through this initiative, the vendor will be growing its channel network. “We
currently have about 150-200 channel partners and will be looking at doubling
that in the next two quarters. Our distributor-Supertron has 26 branches across
the country and they in turn have master distributors. As of now, metros is
where we will be concentrating our efforts on. We have our presence in all
cities but our main focus in the last few months has been on Delhi, Mumbai and
Bengaluru,” explained Kobayashi.

To get its partners enthused, the vendor recently launched schemes/promos for
the channel. 'Fly This Winter' offers Buffalo channel partners an opportunity to
earn more by purchasing Buffalo products. “Resellers can gain points by buying
Buffalo storage or wireless products. Depending on the number of points the
partner gets, they are eligible for freebies or a foreign trip. The scheme is
valid till Sep 30, 2009. The aim of these schemes is to motivate the channel and
make them do more,” explained Milinda Banerjee, Liaison Representative-India,
Buffalo Inc.

Being dealing mostly in high-end products, there is also a need to educate
the channel about the features and technical specs. “Whenever a product is
launched, we try and hold some technical seminars/training for partners. We also
regularly hold dealer meets where we meet partners one-on-one and try to
understand what they are looking for and whether they are technically sound,”
said Kobayashi.

Keeping the green trend in mind, Buffalo's latest NAS devices reduce power
consumption by 66 percent, while simultaneously reducing CO2 emissions. These
power management features include a scheduled power management system with three
timers, allowing for automatic shut down during non-business hours. These
devices also include hard drive spin-down, which saves energy when drives are
not in use. “With storage products like NAS, you just plug it in and it works 24
hours a day, seven days a week. But you don't access these drives 24 hours a
day, so our drives go into sleep mode when you don't access them for a
particular time,” explained Kobayashi.

He added that India is a very price-conscious market, that's why the vendor
feels the need to hold demos for the channel. “Otherwise we cannot show them how
good our product is,” said Kobayashi.

At the moment, Buffalo holds less than five percent of the storage
marketshare, but Kobayashi shared that they plan to notch that up to 15 percent
in the next three years.