MSI forays into retail arena

Anjali Choudhary New Delhi, Sep 14

Motherboard and graphic cards company - MSI (Micro Star International) is
all set to make its presence felt in the retailing arena with the appointment of
retail partners for its notebooks. The first shipment of MSI notebooks will
reach Tirupat Enterprises, its distributors for the Kolkata region, in the
latter part of this month. However, the company did not divulge much information
about the numbers (notebooks) they are looking to push into the market in the
first

quarter.

Diversifying its focus from being a core motherboard and graphic cards
company, MSI during the last couple of years has expanded its product portfolio
by including various consumer electronics as well as information technology
products to its fold. Even though MSI started its India chapter five years back,
it only setup an office here in Delhi in February this year.

Prior to the opening of the Delhi office, MSI was driving its products in
India through four distributor partners namely Tirupati Enterprises, Priya, eSys
and Maxtone. While the former two distributors of MSI deal with AMD-based
products, eSys and Maxtone are involved in selling Intel-based products only.

“We are trying to emulate the same philosophy that our head office in
Taiwan has adopted of ramifying business in various product categories. Moving
away from the 'motherboards vendor' tag we will now be marketing our entire
product line in India ranging from consumer electronics, notebooks, graphic
cards, barebones and others. Since we have tough competition in the form of
established MNC notebook brands we will try to drive our product line in the
market

innovatively with a very selected approach. Our first lot of notebooks will
reach the Indian market by the end of this month,” said Frank Sherap, Country
Manager, MSI.

Sherap also informed that the company is presently looking for retail
partners in metro's and semi-metro cities. Sherap elaborated, “To begin with
we will rope in retail partners for our notebook series only in select cities.
That will perhaps help us to get a feel of the market scenario. We will appoint
partners based on their genuine interest in the product so that they can do
justice to a comparatively new brand on the block.”

Sherap also elaborated that that MSI would bank on its reasonable pricing
factor and support mechanism to compete with well-known laptop brands in India.
The company has already made amendments in its servicing policies by partnering
with Digicomp as its third party after sales service provider for south and
eastern parts of the country. While north and west territories will be looked
after by MSI directly as far as providing warranty and after sales support is
concerned.

Apart from entering retail, MSI is also planning to make inroads into B and C
class cities and towns to market its entire range of products, for which the
company will appoint reseller channels.