Over the years, India has saw rapid digitalization across all leading sectors. But success of digital transformation depends on adoption of innovative connectivity solutions. We all know that the penetration and momentum of digital networks across territories is highly dependent on their infrastructure. India’s well-known brand, Polycab Telecom has come up with a one-stop-destination for end-to-end digital-infra solutions. Ashish D. Jain, Executive President & COO, Telecom Business, Polycab India Ltd shared his opinion with DT about company’s overall performance, Channel and future plans.
DT: Please share overall performance for Polycab Telecom in the year 2022!
Ashish: Strong and regular demand in passive networking solutions and incessant spread of Telecom EPC-projects under BharatNet Phase-II in different Indian states have kept our Order Book healthy in 2022. It was this year only, when we got awarded the contract of a Master System Integrator by Tamil Nadu FibreNet Corporation Limited (TANFINET), to implement the BharatNet Phase-II project in the districts demarcated under Package A in Tamil Nadu. Additionally, our Passive Product portfolio saw encouraging demand coming in from enterprises in various segments including, oil and gas, hospitality, FMCG, pharma, healthcare, education etc.
DT: Please share target-revenue or growth-percentage to achieve by the end of 2022-23
Ashish: In fact, we’ve had better FY this time than the last one and this has been the trend. As a new entrant in the data-market with end-to-end Copper and Fiber solution, we can proudly say that we always have had better FY than the last one. With strong GTM-plans in place, we expect exponential growth in the times to come.
DT: What vision or features make your brand better than others?
Ashish: We will say “different from others”. Polycab is an organization, that bears a proud legacy of serving people and partnering the nation. In nearly 60 years of our journey, we’ve always kept organizational goals aligned with our nation’s priorities. After making a foray into telecom with Polycab Telecom, we developed newer capabilities to play an enabler’s role in the evolving landscape of new-age national aspirations regarding digital connectivity for the masses. In fact, after starting to manufacture the whole range of passive networking products, including fiber and copper, we’ve emerged as a unique single-source manufacturer and provider of both Data and Power solutions in India. While companies in telecom-domain in India are either involved in manufacturing or distribution, we as an organization are uniquely placed in the industry, being involved in manufacturing as well as distribution of Optical Fibre Cables, Copper LAN Cables and passive networking products, with empowered backward-integration capabilities. As a homegrown brand, Polycab echoes the ethos and essence of Make-in-India and has brought manufacturing of power and passive networking solutions under one unified brand in a single OEM-strategy.
On the other hand, with back-to-back timely completion of BharatNet projects in Gujarat and Bihar and current engagement in the TANFINET project, we’ve successfully positioned ourselves as a strong telecom EPC organization with the extended capability to design, build and manage end-to-end data-network roll-out.
DT: How do you take care of channel-margins & profitability?
Ashish: As a 6 decade-old organization with diverse business-portfolios, capabilities and channel-centric GTM strategies, we’ve an exceptional track-record of growing together with our distributors and partners with exceptional values. Our channel-partners have been truly instrumental in making Polycab a household name. The key to this channel-relationship has been trust. Protection of their profitability with complete transparency has been ingrained in our company’s core value-system. We regularly keep them equipped with sales and marketing support and product-training at regular intervals. We’ve a dedicated channel-activation team to help them with all the required support to address their ground-issues. We’ve a well-defined sales policy and logistics support mechanism. Our dedicated pre-sales and product management teams are fully aligned to help the partners in solution-design that matches the exact needs of their customers.
We’re committed to provide them with all the requisite support, as to our reach to a large customer-base with unique offerings of both Data and Power solutions for wider acceptability and increased wallet-share. A layered partner-activation comes as opportunities for them with flexible and accommodating business-models to enable them to work at every level. We’ve given them Authority and Ownership with attractive earning, loyalty-programmes and competitive offerings to acquire target-customers from growing domains like Infrastructure, Healthcare, Transport, Pharma etc. for world-class products, in EPC and Connectivity, the backbone of large enterprises and SMEs.
DT: Please share few sales-tips for channel-community.
Ashish: Playing the long game is the real key. The ability to make a deeper reach into the addressable market is directly proportional to the amount of effort that channel-partners put into quality channel-training. Secondly, the focus must remain on garnering new resources, capabilities and assistances from OEMs. Product-training, new products, delivery-excellence and client-value form another focus-area. Deeper skills in products and customization help them align themselves well to support OEMs’ GTM-plans to acquire more and more customers with hand-in-hand approach. They must plan and devise future strategies around realistic goals.
