Asia is a very resource hungry market

Which regions is Sahara Computers focusing on?



As a company we are focusing on three countriesAfrica, Dubai, and India.

Africa is an emerging market and it is not yet as ripe as the Indian market.

We do not have the bandwidth to take on all the emerging markets because Asia

in itself is a very resource-hungry market. It does not have a developed market

where you can have a distribution structure and can put products in an

autonomous way.

Your marketshare in India is not very high. What are you doing about it?



An emerging market is one in which you have to start from scratch by

creating the market. You have to look at the PC penetration, which is less than

one percent in India. One has to look not just at selling PCs, but also at how

one can create awareness because that is most important. One needs to create the

marketshare. It would be foolish to think that you can create a marketshare and

grab 100% of it.

George Van Der Merwe, COO, Sahara Computers and Electronics, India

What kind of Indianization goes into your products?



Because we are focusing on B and C-class cities where power is a problem,

our notebooks come with an eight-cell battery. Even our entry-level machines

have DVD writers. We dont give combo drives because the media is moving to DVD

writers.

With other PC and laptop vendors lowering the prices to tap more

consumers, do you plan to reduce your prices for getting more marketshare?



These vendors offer Duo Core notebooks, which is an old technology. Their

machines are Wi-Fi enabled and come with a six-cell battery. It usually has 80GB

Quad RAM with low memory, typically around 1GB.

A customer buying that notebook needs wireless connectivity and a DVD writer

instead of a combo drive. To access the Internet everywhere, he has to go and

buy a wireless card, which costs around Rs 3,000. Other upgradations like a DVD

writer will cost more.

We have a standard pricing policy. With our notebooks and desktops, we try to

look for the potential region. We dont compromise on performance or quality. We

design products according to the customers requirements. We definitely match

the price point and no one can beat us on that.

Pooja Sharma



maildqindia@cybermedia.co.in