The $10 billion Acer Computers International is planning to make its Indian arm, Acer India, the largest outsourcing base for its products in the Southeast (SE) Asian region. Towards this, Acer India is scaling up its operations systematically over the next few years.
According to S Rajendran, general manager- marketing, Acer India, "We plan to increase the level of Indian share in Acer's overall global capacities. India could become the largest sourcing base for Acer's products in the Southeast Asian region over the next few years." Currently, Acer India has one production facility at Pondicherry which is expected to step up production to 5,000 units per month in a single shift.
Rajendran further added that "the company will address the e-life space since with electronics touching the common man in every way, Acer will see that it has the technology to cater to this segment. Our brand value already gives us an edge in making an impact here."
Acer India already has a customer base of 1.80 lakh and has been the only multinational personal computer (PC) manufacturer to book profits in its first year of operations. However, so far the company's main focus was not just on capturing market share but on doing business profitably. The result was that the company's market share in the PC segment was not very high. The earlier strategy was not going directly to the market but to follow the channel strategy whereby it aligned with system integrators in a big way.
Last year, Acer had a turnover of around Rs 130 crore and a further $10 million (approx Rs 48 crore) business in dollar revenues.
Although worldwide Acer is among the world top ten PC vendors, in India it still has to garner a reasonable market share. With more than 50 per cent of the PC market being cornered by the unorganised sector. The balance has been carved out between the top multinational brands such as Compaq, Hewlett-Packard and IBM and local companies such as Wipro and Zenith.
