Our focus will be on memory modules

Has the economic slowdown affected your company?

There is an impact on business in India. Being a privately held company, our
decision-making process was very fast. Hence, we were able to weather the
economic storm effectively. We understood the impact on our Indian business much
ahead of any other company in India and shifted our media budgets to channel
completely. Even at this time of recession, it was not a negative growth for us.
Like the US or Europe, APAC was not much affected due the economic slowdown.

What is the potential for Kingston products in India?

I definitely see potential for growth for all our products, particularly memory
modules and flash products. In this space, I expect a huge growth in the next
five years in India. As the infrastructure is getting established, the usage of
desktops and laptops will grow in number, which will expand the demand for
memory modules. We have identified that there is immense scope for memory
modules. Hence, our immediate focus will be on this space.

Wei Wei yin, marketing director, APAC, Kingston

How are you focusing on the post-sales service of the products?

We have tied-up with Accel Frontline. They have coverage across forty cities in
India. In addition, we have a call center to address basic issues. Whenever
there are issues that cannot be addressed over phone, our customer can step into
any of our service centers to get the problem fixed. Besides, we have trained
service people to address the problem at the customers place. Given the quality
of our products, our statistics show that the failure rate is minuscule.

How Kingston sees the market for SSD?

Kingston entered the SSD market in 2009. Theres a big potential in the SSD
market. Consumers looking for better performance and consistency will most
likely turn to SSDs. Once the cost is lowered to an affordable level, there will
be a big growth in this segment. The market is an emerging one and more brands
are entering this market.

What is your channel network in India?

We have seven distributors in India now. For our DRAM modules, we have Neoteric
Informatique for the western region; HCL Infosystems, Shree Pati Computers and
Transtek Infoways for the North, South and East regions; and Compuage Infocom
for North and South. For our flash products, we have Shree Pati Computers in the
North; Sunrise Infosolutions in the West.

Vasudevan N

maildqindia@cybermedia.co.in