Dell plans SMB expansion

Dell India is all geared up to establish itself in the tier-2 and tier-3 cities. The company has always been positive about the SMB segment in the country and now, to tap the opportunities arising from these sectors, the company is working out its strategies.

SMBs have always been the growth engine, however, the biggest growth came from the consumer segment for Dell India. Satyen Vyas, director, medium business, consumer and SMB, Dell India said, "From being at the #6 position, 3 years ago now we are the #1 in SMB segment in the PC and laptop domain. Furthermore, from having a 2.5% marketshare we grew to 15.5% in the SMB space across all product categories."

Dell India has business coming from all across the country, and a majority of it comes from top 8 cities which includes the 4 metros and 4 mini metros like Pune, Ahmedabad, etc. Adding to this, Vyas said, "What we have done in the last 9 months is that we have decided to go to the next tier of cities. So we have chosen to go to 22 cities through both our channel partners and sales personals, as we can see new growth opportunities for us in the SMB space." The company intends to setup its base in cities like Mysore, Coimbatore, Vizag, Udaipur, Nagpur, Raipur, Nashik, Chandigarh, Ludhiana, Kanpur, Lucknow, etc. In addition, the company intends to have a direct presence in these cities and service its partners and customers directly.

There is significant scope of business in the SMB space and Dell India is now getting aggressive to capture these opportunities. On this, Vyas said, "Under the SMB segment, mostly the customers are companies with 150-200 employees and their problems are similar to large enterprises. Among these, companies which utilize technology as business enablers are our important customers. Apart from these, manufacturing, animation and media, and retail are critical segments for us where there is a tremendous growth potential."

In the last couple of years, the industry had witnessed an increase in acceptance of Dell products across the country. Vyas said, "We have seen an increase in acceptance of our business from partners and now we are able to engage better with them. Earlier we got feedback from partners that we had multiple segments going to them. But now with the formation of GCC, things got streamlined and the response is much better, irrespective of the product segment. Also, we work very closely with our channel partners now."

The company spokesperson further added that with the formation of GCC, they realized the need to engage with partners, so they broke the 3 region strategy to 7 region strategy. To cater to the needs of the consumers and partners and to manage the regions more effectively, the company has divided the country into multiple regions. The company divided North, West and South into 2 regions each and kept East as one single region.