Dell eyes $21-billion India opportunity for its end-to-end IT solutions

The $58-billion PC maker Dell, which has embarked on a journey of transforming itself from a pure-play hardware vendor to an end-to-end scalable solutions provider, says India will soon become its fourth largest market in the world.

The company, which raked in revenues of $12.5 billion from Asia Pacific & Japan last year, says it expects to have a fantastic run in India over the next 3-5 years. India is currently the eighth largest market for Dell.

The company is trying hard to shrug off customer perception of Dell as a PC-maker and is investing heavily in people, portfolio and development in its software business, which is the next step of evolution for the company.

“We have much better solutions than our competitors, which are not understood in the marketplace. The perception of Dell as a PC-company should go. We would like customers to understand our products, services and solutions much better than it is today,” Amit Midha, President, Asia Pacific & Japan and Chairman, Global Emerging Markets – Dell, told BusinessLine at the Dell India IT Executive Summit 2014, held in Dubai recently.

Dell is eyeing a $21-billion market opportunity in India which is a conservative estimate of the market opportunity, said Alok Ohrie, President & Managing Director of Dell India.

The company’s India business is growing at a steady clip of seven per cent year-on-year. “With the new government winning the majority mandate and after reading the early signs of the new Budget, this $21-billion market opportunity should go up dramatically over the next few years. All our four business units — End User Computing, Dell Services, Enterprise Solutions Group and Dell Software Group — will drive growth for us,” added Ohrie.

Stating that the privatisation of Dell last October has hastened the pace of execution of Dell India’s new go-to-market strategy effective Q1 (February-April), Ohrie said the strategy has been designed with clear geographic accountability for regions across India.

While Dell was working with 40,000–50,000 customers directly for the last 6-8 years, the new strategy includes a three-pronged approach: Dell-led, partner-led and distribution-led.

Explaining the approach, Anil Sethi, Director and General Manager, Channels, Dell India, said, “Dell-led is all about the sales force directly engaging with a few large key enterprise customers, including new customer acquisition and retention of existing customers.

These could be for complex IT projects or large end-to-end deployments. Partner-led would involve Dell’s 2,500 partners (260 active partners) who will engage with mid-size enterprises, where special pricing and special products are a focus.

Distribution-led involves our distributors such as Redington, Ingram and Iris Computers which would address immediate customer requirements and drive growth in two product lines – client (laptop, desktops and tablets); server storage and networking at the entry level, thereby increasing availability of Dell solutions across the country.” Currently, 60 per cent of the company’s business is from Dell’s direct engagement with customers and 40 per cent from indirect (partners, distributors). In two years, Sethi is aiming for 80 per cent of business accruing from indirect and 20 per cent from direct.

The writer was in Dubai for the Dell India IT Executive Summit 2014 at the invitation of the company