Patriot to offer special pricing for India

Vinita Bhatia Mumbai, July 12

Patriot Memory, which is marking its entry into the Indian
market, is considering coming out with a special pricing only for India to help
it gain a foothold in the market. Having traditionally sold in the US markets
for 20 years, the company opened its Asian office in Taiwan just two years ago.
Since then, this region has seen a high traction in terms of sales.

Now, looking at the potential of the Indian market, Patriot will
soon enter the country with the help of a channel network. To help its
positioning in the market, it is also planning to come out with a strategic
pricing for the region, under guidance from its channel.

For its channel network, Patriot will appoint distributors who
will not focus on certain geographies, but on select verticals. "We believe
that one single distributor would not be able to reach out to many channel
partners, especially those in the smaller cities," said Paul Jones, CEO,
Patriot Memory.

So the company will have regional distributors who will work
with the retail channel, the systems integration channel, the reseller channel,
the upgrade customers and so on. "This is the only way we can be profitable
and reach out to a wider set of customers. Also, since each of the distributors
will be targeted on certain verticals, there will not be too much channel
conflict, which is precisely what we want," Jones added.

He is confident that this strategy will work. This is the same
strategy that Patriot has adopted in other countries and it has paid it rich
dividends, as per the company. "Memory is a commodity and therefore the key
to succeed in this business is to move large volumes. This is why we need to
reach out to as many channel as is possible so that they in turn can take our
products to the end customers," Jones noted. "Also, price fluctuations
in the memory market are very rampant. We can decide what the profits margins
for a particular customer vertical should be and then in case of price changes,
the channel has the leeway to work on the margin bandwidth to ensure that they
don't suffer any losses."

Patriot will initially be present in India through its partners
and will work on having a robust post-support network in place. Over time, the
company will also establish its Indian office.

According to estimates, the market for DRAM is $30 billion while
Flash cards is expected to be around $20 billion globally. While Patriot will
continue to push its DRAM memories, it will increase its focus on the Flash
memories and USB drives. The sales of these two products have been incrementally
going up at a steady pace over the past several years globally. But more so in
India where the telecom and mobility market is moving at a steady pace.

Jones is unfazed by the presence of gray and fake products in
India. He felt that fake manufacturers could make products identical to the ones
Patriot designs. But they will not find it viable to include all the technology
that OEMs integrate in the products.

Talking about the parallel import channel, Jones noted that it
is still in existence because of the price differential in the original and the
gray products. This is precisely why the company will be coming out with an
India specific pricing, which will make it lucrative to buy genuine products
from authorized channels.