By Priyanka Chowdhury
Indian PC vendor Zenith Computers has charted expansion plans that include increasing its retail footprint, adding more products to its PC portfolio, and signing up regional distributors in certain geographies to ensure market penetration.
The vendor plans to add a total of 230 retail stores this year—130 Zenith PC World stores and 100 multi-brand stores. “Our retail expansion plan is aimed at increasing our presence in tier-3 and tier-4 cities,” said Raj Saraf, Chairman and Managing Director, Zenith. The company already has 500 exclusive retail partners and 300 multi-brand partners spread across 250 cities.
Zenith also plans to add more flavors to its portfolio. It has recently refreshed its entire range of notebooks and will soon launch a line of ultra gaming desktops and notebooks. “Gaming is fast catching up in India. However, the price of gaming machines available in the market is exorbitant. Many can’t afford them, hence we will try to tap this segment by introducing a budget gaming PC priced at Rs 30,000,” Saraf said.
The gaming desktop is scheduled to be launched by the end of June 2009, and the notebook by the end of July 2009.
To improve its market penetration, Zenith is signing up regional distributors. It has so far appointed three regional distributors for the north-east, Punjab and Kashmir.
In FY08-09, Zenith sold 1.7 lakh PCs of which consumer PCs contributed 35 percent while commercial PCs contributed 65 percent. In value terms, notebook shipments brought in 35 percent of Zenith’s total PCs revenues while the remaining 65 percent was contributed by desktops. |