Indian storage industry has been flourishing with a good pace and according to the current market scenario it is expected to witness tremendous growth in coming years. At present, Kingston is a well-known leading provider of storage products in Indian market and catering this market space by offering high quality products. DT interacted with Mr. Vishal Parekh, Marketing Director, Kingston Technology & HyperX – India to know their business plans and marketing plans to boost further growth. Below are the excerpts from the recent interaction with Vishal.
DT: Please briefly share your views on the overall growth of Indian storage market. How do you see the growth of SSD market in next 3-4 years?
Mr. Vishal: Rising income levels couple with increase in internet penetration and expanding user base coupled with growing government initiatives towards digitalization are expected to propel the growth of Indian storage market in the coming years. In this evolving digital scenario, every business entity, enterprise or government organization is heavily utilizing computers to save enormous volume of data on day to day basis which has created the need for more storage space and greater performance. It is expected that the coming years will witness huge adoption of flash storage as more and more companies will start utilizing all size of SSDs to optimize the performance. Also, the memory card is rapidly becoming the preferred form factor for flash storage cards, because of its easy removability, small size and high performance.
DT: How does Kingston plan to further escalate the growth rate in the growing market conditions?
Mr. Vishal: Our priority in India is same as other regions, which is providing high performance products at a competitive price and without compromising on quality or after sales service. We believe in helping corporates and consumers upgrade systems with memory and storage solutions for better productivity and their business. Adding further, we conduct several consumer driven programs with our workshops, events and promotions to let customers at least try out the newer technologies and make an informed choice. Kingston made its mark with the world’s highest capacity USB Flash drive–Data Traveler Ultimate GT which offers up to 2TB of storage space and USB 3.1 Gen 1 performance and we are looking forward to constantly roll our innovative solutions for the Indian storage market.
DT: How is the performance of your gaming division HyperX?
Mr. Vishal: Since the inception in 2002, HyperX has been catering to the high-performance product requirements and tailoring products as per the gaming market. Over the last decade, HyperX has grown to be the choice of top-rated gamers, tech enthusiasts and over clockers worldwide. The brand has been designed to understand the dynamic needs of Gen Next. Stating an example, HyperX recently shipped 5mn headsets and we are happy that our audience appreciates the efforts we put in making their experience exceptional. Not just that, we have one of the best feedback from customers and the media about our HyperX Cloud Revolver S headset for the best surround experience.
DT: Please brief about how you take care of the data safety in your storage devices?
Mr. Vishal: Data security is a growing concern and we want people to understand the ways of maintaining the data security. Though we conduct workshops on this, we are happy that the media is on the same page as us to highlight this issue. We have the largest portfolio in secured storage. We have more than 90% share globally and have some of the happiest customers. In fact we have created some intuitive videos on our official YouTube channel that help understand how data can be made much safer with Kingston solutions.
DT: What are your strategies to monetize the upcoming festive season opportunity?
Mr. Vishal: The festive season in India creates a greater wave of enthusiasm and positivity among the brands audience too. Though we see business all year round, the festivity has different push altogether. For the festive season, we will leverage the fact that most of our products have a mass appeal and are fast moving. In terms of launches, we have launched Nucleum, a 7-in-1 USB hub Type-C and the Kingston Bolt, a dual USB with lightning connector, just before the festive season. Amongst others, our headsets and USB drives are the perfect gifting options among the youth, tech enthusiasts, gamers, etc., who tend to look for buying products with utility and not just an add on.
DT: How do you offer excellent service support to your customers? What kind of efforts you put to win the trust of first time buyers?
Mr. Vishal: You would be surprised if you knew that Kingston offers a ‘Lifetime Warranty’ for our memory and flash cards, and it means the physical life of the product. With such confidence in our product quality, our customer support is equally strong and able. Customer Service is critical for any brand and we take this aspect of business seriously. With brisk automation comes minimized customer engagements and we have had this process for quite some time. It is a win-win situation where the customer simply notifies us of a problem and is tended to by our service partners with the least delay possible. This system of operation also minimizes the basic human errors. We have also make use of a service app where our customers can get latest updates about the status of their products and issues, which the service team would be dealing with. We also have one point of contact for technical support. In addition to this, an integrated system makes it possible to maintain and analyze a customer database.
DT: What are your channel strategies for online & offline partners? How do you make balance between these two different distribution models?
Mr. Vishal: Kingston is a channel friendly brand and we believe in growing with the channel partners. We consider our channel partners as an important part of our growth, as they do contribute to our brand image. Kingston, on a regular basis, strategizes schemes and promotional activities to help the channel partners promotes them and offers the best of value added services.
