In March 2013, Linksys became a division of Belkin International, Inc. Linksys current consumer product portfolio in India includes Wireless Routers and Gateways, Wireless Range Extenders, USB Network Adapters, and Networking Accessories. For the Small and Medium Business (SMB) Segment, Linksys India currently offers Switches, VPN Routers, Access Points and Networking Accessories.Prabu Subramanian, Sales Manager, Linksys – India and SAARC is currently responsible for company’s overall growth. DT interacted with Prabu recently to know more about his entire roadmap and upcoming channel plans. Read the excerpts below:
DT: What have been the crucial milestones of your company during year 2017?
Mr. Prabu: The India launch of our two of our flagship products, the very powerful Linksys WRT1900ACS router and the Linksys EA7500 Max-Stream AC1900 router with the MU-MIMO technology were crucial milestones during 2017. These products have been acclaimed internationally as well as in India with rave media reviews.
DT: What were the major challenges for your company? How do you fought those challenges?
Mr. Prabu: In the last financial year we had challenges in launching new products in India which were launched globally because of the restriction on few of the products’ Power & Wi-Fi output. We are currently working on launching products according to Indian standards and we expect to roll out 6 different models in various categories by 2018.
DT: How GST changed your business affair in year 2017? What were your preparation to adopt this biggest tax reform?
Mr. Prabu: We had an impact of the GST at the retail level where partners were forced to sell products at a higher price or at a loss to liquidate the pre-GST inventory. We worked closely with our partners in helping them sell their stocks without much impact to the end customers. Various support measures and schemes were introduced to ensure smooth transition to the new tax regime to help liquidate or average out the old inventory.
DT: What's your channel strength currently in India? How do you plan to boost channel strength in year 2018?
Mr. Prabu: We are currently working with Compuage Infocom as our National Distributor. Via Compuage, our products are successfully sold in India through a network of 100+ channel partners. Linksys products are available online as well as offline.
The core philosophy of Linksys is to be a channel driven and a pro-channel brand. Carrying this vision forward, we plan to invest more resources in training our partners in new technologies, incentivizing them on educating the end customers on Linksys technologies. We also plan to invest in various promotional schemes and campaigns to help them sell Linksys products in a much stronger way.
DT: What will be major products/solutions you will be launching in year 2018? Which will be your key target verticals / market?
Mr. Prabu: Our Major Product launch in 2018 will be our Mesh wireless Router technology and our Gaming router WRT32X. Our new focus vertical is Internet Service providers, Gaming industry and Home automation partners.
DT: Please share your current revenue and market growth rate. What is target for year 2018? How do you plan to achieve this set target?
Mr. Prabu: Although we cannot disclose our local revenue figures, we are positively planning for at least a 20-30% growth in 2018 in India considering factors like positive trends on the broadband growth, more ISP players entering the market and data bandwidth growth. We plan to achieve this by introducing more powerful and innovative Wi-Fi solutions for the home, gaming and small business markets.
