Zenith to emphasize on retail

The laid-back town of Goa is suddenly home to more than 769 dealers and a few
partners of Zenith Computers who have gathered here for the Annual Dealers Meet
2002, from Aug 19 to 22. Applauding the enormous support presented by dealers
from across India, Raj Saraf, CMD, Zenith Computers outlined his strategy for
the fiscal with a great thrust on retail with a plan to open 100 more showrooms
across the country.

With a strong outlet force of 130 showrooms across 125 cities, he claimed
that the company has always believed in steady growth and continuing
profitability. Commenting on the overall fall in desktop segment amounting to
18.8 percent, he said that the top four towns had contributed 34 percent to this
figure and the next four, which includes, Hyderabad, Bangalore etc, added 46
percent.

Quoting IMRB figures, he said that there is huge potential for the desktop
segment to grow despite the economic slowdown and other essential factors like
manufacturing, BFSI, services and media segment being on the downswing.

The survey also reveals that the market has been harsher to the assembled PC
segment. Here again Saraf scores a brownie with some of his products being sold
at competitive prices, which are lower than those offered by assembled players
and thereby ruling a certain part of that segment too.

Up his sleeve, he has one more ace, which accounts from the increase in brand
awareness for his company and products during the two halves of 2001-02 which
grew from 50 to 57 percent in the establishments segment and 37 to 51 percent in
the household segment along with established players like Wipro and Compaq
holding the top two positions in these slots.

The session was also attended by Avtar Saini, Director (South Asia), Intel;
James Jong, Executive Director, Samsung; Vivek Prakash, Head (Sales and
Marketing), Samsung; Ananth Lazarus, Group Manager, Microsoft and Dhaval Valia,
Editor, Computer Reseller News.

Saini talking about investing in the knowledge economy claimed that all
knowledge economies were dependent on IT and added that worldwide Internet
traffic, which was about 150 petabytes (1 million GB = 1 petabyte) per month in
2001, would go upto 60,000 petabytes per month by 2010.

He claimed that Internet access gave a competitive advantage to countries.
Saini also added that India with a good GDP average and growth in telecom sector
of about 20 percent CAGR could stake a claim to a global leaders role.

Prakash encouraged the dealers who were present to ‘upsell’ and utilize
the latent potential that was present in the market and claimed that the PC
penetration in India was 1/5th of China and it was time we utilized the need
from the consumers side and sold him what he wants by showing him the inherent
value in the products we are marketing.

Dhanya Krishnakumar

(CNS)