In a bid to ramp up its retail presence in India, the US-headquartered storage solution provider, SanDisk will focus on tier II and tier III cities and towns. The company has already entered into distribution tie-ups with Beetel and Inter Foto this year.
SanDisk, through its increased retail presence is aiming to cash-in on the demand for storage solutions arising out increase in sale of camera-enabled mobile handsets, tablets and digital cameras.
“Considering the rise in sales of handset and similar devices; we see a sizable demand for our storage solutions. We also plan to invest in branding in India,” Ms Manisha Sood, Country Manager & Director, India and SAARC, SanDisk told
SanDisk, which clocked global revenues of $ 4.7 billion (Rs 21,150 crore) in 2010, specialises in Flash storage through memory vaults, storage cards and USB drives. It enjoys a 28 per cent market share in the Asia-Pacific region and competes with Kingston and Transcend in the category.
Retail Presence
The tie up with Inter Foto India Pvt. Ltd, which took place in April 2011, will enable SanDisk to use its distribution channels for marketing its high end memory cards designed specifically for DSLRs. Inter Foto is Nikon's authorised global distributor.
The company has also entered into a marketing tie-up with Beetel in September this year. Beetel Teletech, telecom and peripherals arm of Bharti Enterprises is a leading manufacturer and distributor of telecom and IT products.
“The tie-up with Beetel will help us reach across different the C, D and E category towns,” Ms Sood said.
The company also has distribution tie-ups with HCL (since 2008), Ingram Micro and Rashi Peripherals (since 2006).
According to Ms Sood, the company is also planning different shop–in-shop concepts in the large format retail stores where the full array of SanDisk products will be displayed.