Hitachi to appoint a national distributor

Hitachi Data Systems is in the process of appointing a national distributor and is also appointing specialized SIs to tap the mid-segment in India. However, the Bangalore-based vendor was not in a position to announce the name of the distributor.

PP Subramanian, Country Manager (India), Hitachi, confirmed by saying, “By next month we will be able to announce the

name of the distributor. We have also shortlisted 100 SIs out of which 50 to 60 will be finalized.”

He added, “Hitachi ventured into the Indian market in April 2001 but has been strong only in the enterprise space. In the financial year 2002-03 Hitachi has been able to touch a revenue of $ 14 million from the Indian market. Therefore, it was time to move into the mid segment.”

Out of Hitachi’s total business, 80 percent comes from high-end. It works with partners like Wipro and Apara for the mid-segment. But now Hitachi will be appointing SIs to get aggressive in this segment. 

“These SIs will be high-end box movers conducting Rs 30 to 50 crore worth of business. Here the champion accounts of these SIs must be the major amount (50 percent) of their business. The SIs will also provide servicing and therefore there will be Hitachi certified service engineers who will undergo a two week long certification program at Singapore,” added

Subramanian.

The distributor to be appointed will be playing the role of order fulfillment and also providing value that is technical backup.

Hitachi will also be conducting road shows and seminars for CIOs and CTOs to increase its brand recall in the market.

The vendor is expecting to touch $ 20 million by the end of this year from the Indian market. Out of this, it is expecting $ 3 million from the mid segment. The potential customers for Hitachi presently are software developers, institutes, universities, BPOs, advertising agencies, banks, government organizations etc. The competitors in the mid-segment for Hitachi are HP, Compaq, Sun, IBM and Net Apps.

Hitachi has an 80 member team presently in India and is now appointing a National Sales Manager next month to look into these new activities.

Nancy Sudheer