Indian storage market has evolved multifold in recent years. With the ever increasing demand for storage solutions, the market players are offering best storage solutions to customers across all segment. Seagate, a leading tech brand is catering to this huge demand with its cutting-edge products which are in huge demand. Seagate leverages latest technologies to develop the best storage solutions that can meet the diverse needs of organizations. Sameer Bhatia, Director of Asia Pacific Consumer Business Group, and Country Manager for India & SAARC, Seagate Technology shared insights about product features and channel plans with DT.
DT: What are the key features that make your brand better than others?
Sameer: With more than four decades of storage innovation, Seagate empowers humanity to thrive in the data age. To support businesses and consumers in navigating the ever-expanding data landscape, Seagate offers the broadest range of storage solutions to help store the data securely and cost-effectively.
For Seagate, customers are at the heart of everything we do – from designing solutions to delivering best-in-class functionalities and customer support. Backed by our robust partner network in India, we continue to address the burgeoning demand for smart and secure data management solutions by bringing to market innovative technologies that will meet evolving business and consumer needs. One great example is Seagate Rescue Data Recovery Services™ which lets users have peace of mind for unforeseen data loss.
Seagate Lyve Cloud is another great solution that shows how we put customer pain points at the core of our product designs. According to IDC’s 2022 Global DataSphere forecast report, 211 zettabytes of data will be generated globally in 2026. This translates into budget headaches for businesses when storage takes the biggest bulk of enterprise IT cost. On top of that, because of the cost, companies are forced to shy away from storing and making use of data for useful business insight, which in turn, slows down innovation. Lyve Cloud reduces storage infrastructure cost and complexity that preventing organisations from making full use of their data. By leveraging Lyve Cloud in scenarios such as data analytics, data repository for content collaboration, and backup/disaster recovery, organisations can break data silos, get insights from their data and dramatically reduce their total cost of ownership.
DT: Please share your strategy for the channel community.
Sameer: At Seagate, our partners are the key drivers of our success in India, and it is imperative for us to empower them by enabling our vendors and distributors with the right combination of knowledge and tools. Our partner programme plays a key role in developing incentives around specific sales initiatives and acquiring new customers. We leverage several programmes that have been created to accommodate the specific needs of channels that serve particular industries or applications.
We aim to support our partners in maximising their results by offering the most optimal storage solutions and services. As part of that initiative, we developed the award-winning Seagate SkyHawk Partner App, a first-of-its-kind solution for video and imaging applications that supports our partner community across the Indian market. It helps partners calculate the storage needs and investment required on the spot and assists with online warranty service booking, tracking facilities, and instant connectivity to SeaCare centres. So far, our app has received over 40,000 downloads and more than 16,000 registrations in India.
DT: What is the key partner program you keep on running to support channel partners across India?
Sameer: We also have the Seagate Partner Programme to connect with customers and partners in the markets. We continue to conduct comprehensive training sessions, seminars, and co-marketing initiatives to address any new opportunities.
Through our distributors, we conduct several training programme for our channel partners to achieve the set targets, which go streamlined with the latest IT industry trends and channel practices in India. We also organise activities for our partners to address the right audience and customers. This includes frequent participation in trade shows such as IFSEC International, Convergence India and Broadcast India, sponsorship of events, providing training to sales staff, and certification programs, and reaching out to our community through social messaging groups.
Some of our unique programs are “Seagate Regional Meets” and “Seagate Surveillance Weeks”. ‘SkyHawk Surveillance week’ is one of our unique initiatives and is conducted in multiple cities to attract a large number of partners (at least 340 partner stores) with exceptional peer insights and expertise in business strategy, innovation, and leadership. We believe these activities will fortify our position as a market leader in the storage, software, and system industries while boosting our channel growth.
