By Sonal Desai, CRN, January 10, 2011, 1200 hrs
Trendnet has entered into a joint venture with Pune-based KSG Technologies and has set an aim to achieve Rs 100 crore turnover from India operations by 2013.
Said Gautam Shah, CEO, KSG Technologies, “We have been a distributor of Trendnet for the past seven years. Extending this partnership, we have now formed a JV, which will operate as Trendnet India.”
The newly formed company has set an aggressive target to achieve 10 percent market share in the networking market. Trendnet range includes wireless products, entry-level to mid-range switches and routers, KVM consoles, IP cameras, network storage, and multimedia accessories.
“We have a large portfolio ranging from products priced at Rs 600 and going up to Rs 50,000. Presently, in our estimate, the Trendnet brand has only 2 percent share of the addressable market in India. But by 2013 we plan to have 10 percent market share which will give us Rs 100 crore in turnover,” added Shah.
The JV will expand its distribution coverage by setting up new offices and appointing a network of regional distributors. KSG currently has four offices in Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and Pune and will soon open three more in Chennai, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad.
“Our focus in the first half of 2011 is to expand and enhance our distribution coverage in 26 cities. We will appoint one regional distributor in each of these cities and, in some large cities like Mumbai and Delhi, we will appoint multiple volume partners. Going forward we will focus on the next 40 cities We offer healthy margins of 10 percent to resellers, and 5-6 percent to authorized volume partners which are more than what our competitors offer” claimed Shah.
Trendnet India will soon rollout training programs for its authorized partners. “The focus is to have tech-oriented partners and to achieve this goal we are embarking on a multi-city training program this quarter,” averred Shah.
Trendnet would also look at OEM partnerships for some of its product range. |