Year 2018 has been great for Kingston & HyperX in India. They are not only able to maintain their leadership position, but they also thrilled the market with launch of top-quality product for end users at a very affordable price point. The brand also invested heavily in creating brand awareness & channel support to remain top of the chart for Indian market. Vishal Parekh, Marketing Director, Kingston Technology & HyperX – India, opens up his GTM plan for Year 2019 with DT.
DT: How has been the year 2018 for you?
Mr. Vishal: We have been leading with the pack globally with our memory business and a superb mindshare in terms of our peripherals. With modifications in our distribution channel and GTM strategies, we see a way leading to a stronger relationship with the end users. In 2018 we showcased quite a few technological improvements like the 3D NAND technology in storage and higher stable frequencies in DDR4. With the gaming culture roaring in the country, we expanded our HyperX product line. We introduce products for specific customer requirements. In line with that, this year we have set a record for launching the most number of Kingston and HyperX products in India, in a single calendar year. We are a proud brand to be supportive and instrumental in shaping up the gaming industry and community. Our gaming brand HyperX enjoys a healthy industry mindshare and market share.
DT: How are you currently working with your partners to strengthen your market position?
Mr. Vishal: Kingston has always believed in providing a healthy support to our channel network and create benefits for the end users. Be it availability, a good computing & gaming user experience, high quality products, or our excellent after sales service, we have fine-tuned our engagements with both, our partners and the end users. As part of the growth plan, we appointed Acro Engineering as our second national distributor for peripherals. The partnership brings a lot of vast experience to the table and we are sure we would be able to cater to a much larger part of the country.
India being a diverse market, we maintain strong relationships and a communication model that is practical & effective. As part of our engagement activity, we offer assistance to our channel partners in order to help them understand the product through our education drives. We have drastically improved on our channel engagements over the years and have developed a better model of communication that gives us an edge over the competitors.
DT: What is your overall roadmap to escalate your growth further in CY 2019?
Mr. Vishal: With successful research and top product quality, we have an even more exciting product line up for 2019. Your readers should expect a lot of improvements in the existing products and some ‘Most Awaited’ products to come to Indian shores soon. We have tuned our GTM strategies even more to expect a uniform presence for both, Kingston and HyperX, in their own niche markets. Also, we have invested our energies with helping the gaming community grow in India and we are confident of it shaping up better in 2019. We are even working on the last mile point i.e. after sales service to make it even more seamless with adequate support systems in place.
DT: What are your suggestions to policy makers to counter any existing business challenges in ICT market?
Mr. Vishal: We encourage policies that are transparent and help partners understand market dynamics better. This means having a structure that makes processes and procedures, better and faster. If the trade associations can be more actively involved in the policies of the ICT market, it might create a healthy environment to do business in.
