Dell, the PC manufacturer, is all set to shed its tag of just being a computer manufacturer. India, one of the fastest-growing markets for the company, will see its integrated play and offering of both hardware and software.
In India, Dell is a $1.5-billion entity. While the company hit a high note when it emerged as the number one player in the PC segment (both laptop and desktop), but with the Perot acquisition in 2010, it also brought its service offerings into India.
“The addresable market for Dell in India and globally has expanded tremendously. Globally, we have a market of $3-trillion opportunity and are a $60-billion company in revenue. In India, we are a $1.5-billion company and the opportunity is just huge,” said Sameer Garde, president, commercial business, Dell, India.
In order to capture the fast growing Indian IT market, Dell wants to create synergies between its PC, server and storage segment with its services offering. To bring in these synergies, the company recently called back Garde to India as the president of commercial business.
“Over the last few years, we have been able to expand our presence. We have built a strong base of customers, especially among the large enterprises, who have favoured Dell for their IT requirement. Almost 50-60 per cent of their business is managed by Dell, it is but natural for us to be able to manage the services related to these businesses. We will leverage the Perot footprint to service India customers,” he added.
A year and a half before, Dell had already set in place a network operation centre (NOC) in Chennai to serve only the Indian clients.
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According to Garde, the focus on India is simply because of the growth the region is witnessing. According to the company’s 10-K filing, revenue from BRIC—Brazil, Russia, India and China—increased 15 per cent year-over-year during the fiscal year 2012 and represented 14.2 per cent of their total net revenue for FY2012, compared to 12.3 per cent for the prior year. “We are continuing to expand into these and other emerging countries that represent the vast majority of the world's population, tailor solutions to meet specific regional needs, and enhance relationships to provide customer choice and flexibility,” said the company’s annual report.
Along with Suresh Vaswani, who heads the services business and is responsible for the BPO and applications business, Garde will be focused on taking the company from being just a PC manufacturer. “We are leading players in the PC and server market in India. In the storage segment, we are at present sixth, but I am confident we will also close the gap there. Our footprint in India, especially in the consumer segment, has expanded into 40-50 cities. We will use this to deliver services and distribution. This was possible earlier too, its just that we did not look at,” he said.
Garde also pointed out that the mid-market segment will be the company’s sweet spot. “Almost 70-75 per cent of our growth has come from outside of top cities, we plan to use these lessons to expand our services portfolio. We believe this will be the growth engine in an emerging market,” said he. He shares that most of the acquisitions the company has done so far have been focused on the mid-market segment.
Dell became a serious player in the services segment after it acquired Perot Systems. The strategy concurs with what some of the global players like IBM, and HP have done in the past. Garde says that unlike others, Dell is committed to its hardware segment.
While the company is focused on increasing its scope among the large players and SME segment, Garde refused to divulge any details on the company’s mobile strategy. According to media reports Dell would be launching its tablet PC with Windows 8, sometime in the second half of this year.