“Micron Will Continue To Strengthen The Channel Network Across Upcountry”

The Indian storage market is witnessing exponential growth and it continues to achieve new heights. The amount of data being generated has augmented the need for reliable, secure and cost-effective methods to store data. The market players in this domain endeavor to bring cutting-edge and next-generation storage solutions to enable the customers to achieve maximum efficiency. Micron is one of the leading storage solution providers that offer advanced storage products through its robust channel network. Rajeev Ranjan, Editor, Digital Terminal held an exclusive chat with Rajesh Gupta, Director, Country Manager – India Sales, Micron. Mr. Rajesh spoke about their product offerings, market landscape, and their channel strategy to accelerate their growth. Read below the excerpts:

Rajeev: Please briefly share your views on the overall growth of Micron and Crucial in the Indian storage market in Year 2020. 

Rajesh Gupta: Over the last FY,  Micron’s business has grown rapidly in India  for Micron branded Industrial/Embedded products as well as Crucial branded Consumer products. During the last year our market coverage has become wider across all market segments . Working with our commercial distributors the Crucial products are now available across all states and major cities in India. Similarly, Micron Industrial products are now reaching  more embedded solution developers and integrators at major Industrial clusters. We also have a good presence on the e-commerce platforms. During year 2020, we have also established reseller and VAR engagements in upcountry locations as well. Our endeavour is to continue to work with our distribution and reseller channel partners to expand our coverage further and make our products available widely and consistently across India. 

Globally, Micron delivered strong revenue and earnings in FQ1, despite the ongoing challenges posed by the pandemic. We began shipping the industry’s most advanced NAND with 176 layers. And in DRAM, we made good progress on our 1-alpha node and are on track to begin volume production in the first half of calendar 2021. We believe DRAM is past the bottom of the industry cycle and expect improving trends through calendar 2021 as the digitization of the global economy continues, fueled by artificial intelligence, cloud, 5G, and the intelligent edge, including smart vehicles. Against this backdrop, Micron is poised to emerge stronger, and we are excited about our future

Rajeev: How India is important ‘as a market’ for Micron? What all investment/expansion plans you have for the Indian market in near future? 

Rajesh Gupta: India is an exciting market for Micron. Our wide range of memory & storage product portfolio covers Industrial electronics, Embedded, Mobile, Compute, Networking, Gaming and Consumer market segments. Micron delivers the industry’s most exhaustive and expansive portfolio of memory & storage products. In the coming years , Micron will continue to strengthen the channel network across upcountry for our Crucial branded Consumer DRAM and SSD products. We have embarked upon an ambitious branding exercise to cover many more markets. Similarly on the Embedded side our plan is to establish an engagement of trust and consistency with key OEMs, ODMs and EMS players for our industry leading products. As we know India is becoming a destination for mobile phone manufacturing with the ecosystem developing for very large scale of domestic and export potential. Micron is ready with an impressive range of DRAM and NAND based products and solutions for this segment and will be able to support growth of this exciting segment.

Rajeev: What are the upcoming technology trends in the Indian storage market? How do you look at these trends and your preparedness to tap the upcoming demands? 

Rajesh Gupta: Calendar 2021 is shaping up to be a solid year, and our overall outlook across DRAM and NAND has improved with broad strength across nearly all end markets and similar trend should be visible in India. The pandemic has driven changes in our economy that we believe would serve to accelerate the digital transformation of the economy and drive new opportunities for the industry. Recovery from the pandemic and pent-up demand are expected to drive strong demand growth in markets such as enterprise, cloud, desktop PCs, mobile, auto and industrial.

Some Key market segment specific pointers are as follows: 

• PC & Clients: Work From Home (WFH) has become a necessary tool of managing workforce for businesses and continues to drive the strong demand for Notebooks and Tablet PCs.  We also expect the desktop market to improve as workers gradually return to the office this year. Not only the demand for new PCs has improved we see a strong demand for existing PC upgrades as both consumer and Corporations maximize the utilization of IT resources and optimize costs and budgets. There is a significant increasing in Online Gaming both on Mobile phones as well as PCs as this becomes one of the viable entertainment option while staying indoors. This has resulted in solid growth in the demand of Gaming focused DRAM modules.
• Data Centre: This segment is expected to be strong in 2021, particularly in the second half of the year. This is due to improving enterprise demand, strengthening opportunities with cloud providers, and the introduction of new CPUs which will increase memory content. We expect migration to DDR5 picking up pace in 2H 2021. 5G mobile network deployments will drive healthy DRAM bit growth as well. We expect 5G related infrastructure deployments during 2H-2021.
• Mobile: Post Covid a strong rebound is smartphone unit sales is already visible and expected to show robust growth this year. The industry could also expect to benefit from higher content in 5G phones, which are forecast to double this year.
• Automotive:  Auto unit sales are expected to grow significantly from last year while secular memory and storage content growth trends remain strong as electric vehicles (EVs) proliferate.
• AI & Big Data: In the Industry 4.0 era, AI will become more accurate and more ubiquitous, and we will start to see it filling in more gaps for simple tasks where people would traditionally. In a post-COVID world, more businesses adopting AI for use cases like these to create contactless experiences. We will also see AI moving into infrastructure such as data centres and 5G base stations as neural network algorithms become more adept at workload and system error correction and recovery 

As the only company with a portfolio of DRAM, NAND and 3D XPoint technologies, Micron is uniquely positioned to benefit from the secular data growth that is driving the cloud, enterprise and networking markets . With a robust network of distributors with specialization in almost all end market segments Micron is in a good position of being a supplier of necessary products.

Rajeev: Please brief about your channel network in India. How do your offline channel partners help you to reach potential customers and serve the rapidly increasing demand? 

Rajesh Gupta: Micron’s business in India is fulfilled by distributors and is organized in two broad categories: Industrial and Commercial. Industrial Distribution focused on Industrial Electronics, Automotive and broad range of embedded segments covering ODMs, EMS and IDHs across India. Micron has Industry leading consumer products including SSDs and DRAM branded as Crucial. For the ‘Crucial’ branded consumer products, we are developing a strong network of resellers, VARs and System Integrators across all 4 regions and multiple cities in India. The resellers and VAR/SI’s do a commendable job of making Crucial branded products available widely across retail counters and e-commerce market places. 

The offline channel plays a critical role in fulfilling the requirement of a widespread consumer base for PC and tablet upgrades. The offline channel keeps a stock of multiple products in the local stores, helps educating consumers about aspects such as compatibility, performance and guide consumers in picking the right products to upgrade their systems. Many consumers prefer to see demonstrations and products before making a decision and offline channel provides them with the opportunity.

Rajeev: What are your commitments to provide best service support to your customers across India? Please brief if you have any plan to scale the service infra across all major cities.  

Rajesh Gupta: Pre and post sales services are very important to improve customer satisfaction besides delivering high quality and reliable products. Micron has invested in a wide network to provide warranty replacements widely cities across India with a network of 40 plus in city service centres. Micron has an exhaustive portfolio of memory and storage products for both Consumer and Industrial business segments. Each of the segment has a complex set up customers that are located widely across the country. The supply chain ecosystem is different for the Commercial and Industrial segments and requires unique skill sets and technology skills. Therefor along with pre & post-sales support coverage, Micron is establishing a training program fine-tuned to the needs of different channel segments. This shall help to train and equip a specific segment focused channel partner to deliver better service to customers.