"By the end of 2004, BenQ will be a household name"

Acer Communications & Multimedia (Acer CM) had announced that it would
change its name to BenQ on December 5, 2001, and operate as a brand that is
independent from Acer. BenQ is still new to the Indian consumers and to the
channel, but it has had a change in top management for the second time, Ashish
Bakshi, joined BenQ last year as country head and has taken efforts in building
the infrastructure but still has a huge task ahead, Nancy Sudheer of The DQ Week
met up with Bakshi to learn more on BenQ’s plans on creating its brand
presence in India

When you took charge of BenQ, it was still a new brand, which had not made
its impact in the Indian market, what steps and changes you have been
instrumental in bringing about in the company?

Streamlining was one of the first steps taken in all the areas right from
company manpower, distribution structure, service, marketing and also product
division. There were three product divisions made which were IT components,
mobile products and digital media. The distribution structure had to be revamped
after which eSys was appointed for display and mobiles, Godrej for projectors
and plasma, Ingram Micro for input, Jupiter for media and Tech Pacific for
storage and imaging products. We are also managing the operations in Nepal,
Srilanka and Bangladesh. The service infrastructure has also undergone a major
change as initially we had our service centers across 17 cities but now we are
present in 50 to 60 cities. There were 21 service centers but now there are 175
service centers across all the product lines. It was also essential for BenQ to
venture into the growing metros, which are the B, C and D class cities. Infact
BenQ recently has also consolidated its service offering nation wide by starting
a franchisee model service centers at Lamington Road at Mumbai and Nehru Place
at New Delhi. BenQ also plans to cover Chennai, Bangalore, Calcutta by April
2004 and also smaller cities of Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Lucknow and Pune by June
2004.

Two million dollars, this was the amount you had reserved
for brand building in India. But today the brand ‘BenQ’ is new, as the
end-users are still not aware and many of the channel partners are still
skeptical about the brand, what are the efforts you are putting in creating a
brand presence in India?

Last year, our concentration was on setting up the infrastructure but now in
the year 2004, it will be on making our presence felt in the channels and among
the end-users. There was no point in spending on promotion last year therefore
BenQ would now focus on advertising, roadshows, and also creating confidence
among the channels. In-store management would be conducted for brand building.
BenQ has concepts like BenQ spots or corners and enjoyment space, which would be
implemented, across retail stores in India. In the future BenQ may also look at
opening flagship stores only after establishing the brand in India. In short, by
the end of 2004 BenQ will be a household name.

Why did you create a separate product segment called ‘digital
media’? What was the need of creating a niche product segment?

The differentiation in product categories was created to give focus especially
all the products are so different. Digital media covers products like the
projector, plasma screens which deals with a unique customer. Channels will
always be our focus and therefore will never move away from it, but this
category needs special attention because of the type of customer and product
line. Therefore, even with our distributors there were apprehensions when we
moved to national level distributors from regional level players. But this was
required as their wide distribution network and logistics were needed for the
brand.