BANGALORE, INDIA: Having garnered a huge pie of the corporate market space, Dell India, is aggressively focusing on the small and medium businesses (SMBs) segment. With a market share of merely 2.2 percent in the Indian SMB space, Dell has been increasing its visibility in the segment over the last two years.

With a strong footprint in the large enterprises segment In India, Dell has now set its sight on medium businesses, government and consumer/home user sectors. Dell defines SMBs as businesses with 10 to 499 employees. From the hardware point of view, each one of the above segments represents one third of Dell's market.

"Today, SMB is the key priority for Dell, globally as well as in India, with regard to notebooks, PCs and server market," says R. Krishnakumar, director, marketing, Dell India.

Generally, SMBs view IT in two extremes, one as a cost and the other as a strategic asset. In India, most SMBs look at IT as a strategic asset," explains Krishnakumar.

Explaining further on IT adoption among SMBs, and Dell turning its eye on this segment, he says: "Basically, SMBs have no planning. Most Indian SMBs function without an IT advisor. The IT infrastructure requirements of such companies are different from that of the other enterprises. Hence, we thought there is an opportunity here and wanted to help SMBs redefine their objectives and assist in implementing the right infrastructure."

"Dell doesn't believe in proprietary. And, SMBs don't look at system integrators (SIs) not from the point of view of just addressing their pain points, but also to take care of the implementation," says Krishnakumar. "SMBs are not looking at product lifecycle management (PLM) at shorter duration. They are open to transition."

Dell's 'Go to Market' strategy has yielded good results. Highlighting Dell's offerings and services for SMBs, he says: "SMBs have the option of choosing various offerings from Dell. The non-IT savvy ones also get software support services from us because most of them do not have an IT manager. A lot of these things depend upon how robust the IT department is."

Leads in laptops
Dell, which is leading the market on par with other leading vendors in the notebook and laptop segments, wanted to break the monopoly of ultra portable systems, which was so far the ambition of a senior manager. "We were the first to launch an innovative laptop with 12.1-inch screen in May this year. It is less than 2kgs. We are doing really good in this market," says Krishnakumar.

As regards reaching out to SMBs in a big way, Dell has engaged itself with SME clusters in various markets. In addition, it is also making use of forums and media like CII and TV 18 to directly market its products to the customer and educate them about Dell's offerings.

Do Indian SMBs have robust IT infrastructure? "We see that every SMB is hungry and wants to go global. They are open to long-term investments and want to avoid legacy systems," he adds.

In India, Dell is in an advantageous position even though it has a market share of around 2 percent. We saw that even large enterprises, with 500 to 1,000 employees, wanted our Vostro products, designed specifically for SMBs. "They looked at it in terms of longer life cycle and products that met their respective requirements," he adds.

"Extending the service offerings, except for theft and fire, our products come with first hand repair support and total replacement. This is very unique from our entry-level notebooks. With this success, we are ready to partner with channel partners and reach out to Tier I and Tier II cities as well," informs Krihsnakumar.

The year ahead
Dell is aggressively looking at building a strong sales team and work with channel partners across the country to cover the SMB market in a big way. "We want to go with those who want to work as true partners with us and not just as box movers. We want our partners to look at customers as long-term relationship," he opines.

Dell has also launched an interactive forum with SMB customers across the country in association with its partners. It has also planned a series of road shows in the next six months in order to reach its offerings to every SMB, who is looking for cost-effective and robust IT infrastructure.