Ravi Swaminathan,
President,
PSG,
HP India
“Being one step ahead makes all the difference”
CRN conferred the coveted Outstanding Channel Contribution Award for 2008 to Ravi Swaminathan, President, Personal Systems Group, HP India, for his contribution in creating, nurturing and strengthening Indian IT channels.
Swaminathan has been instrumental in creating a PC and server channel in the country. At a time when India was just waking up to the IT revolution, he helped catalyze the growth of IT in India. As a result, till today, HP leads the PC market.
Over the last several years, HP has been consistently voted the most preferred PC vendor in the CRN Channel Champions Survey because of its fair and transparent channel policies. Much of the credit for this goes to Swaminathan and the PSG team he built.
Yet the man in the middle of the spotlight is modest about his achievements: “We were lucky to find so many pioneers (channel partners) who had the passion to start something new. Whatever we have achieved has been on the shoulders of these pioneers who played a major role in getting us where we are today. The journey has been fun-filled since we all felt we were building something new, and we had a small, tight and cohesive group.”
Swaminathan still recalls the initial days when he joined Compaq in 1995 to head their consumer business after having worked in a marketing position at ICI. “I used to sell chemicals and paints at ICI when Compaq made me the offer. I knew nothing about IT, but took up the challenge because I saw it as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to kick-start a new industry.”
Compaq didn’t even have a proper office at that time. “We operated from a room at Taj Hotel in Mumbai. I had one person to assist me. Selling 300 desktops a month called for a celebration, and with notebooks we had a party every time we sold more than 10 a month,” Swaminathan recalls.
He soon began work on launching the first retail channel program in the country, but the road ahead was full of obstacles. “Just around the time we rolled out our retail strategy, Computer Point, one of the first IT retail chains in the country, shut shop. Convincing channels to invest in the retail business became a huge challenge, so we had to work to convince one partner at a time.”
Buoyed by the initial success of its retail partner program, Compaq rolled out its exclusive retail franchise program in 1997. By1999 Compaq emerged as the number one consumer PC vendor, displacing strong players like HCL, Wipro and Zenith. “We always believed that the channel was our biggest strength, and that we could leverage their account relationships to secure a win-win for both of us,” Swaminathan says.
He honestly admits that his first reaction to the HP-Compaq merger was negative. “I was a bit surprised and much more apprehensive about the merger. But when we actually got into the integration process, we were pleasantly surprised to find that the attitudes and culture of the PC groups of both companies were so similar. The key challenge was to build one strong team which looked at the future and built a new culture. With regards to channels, I saw this as a great growth opportunity for our partners because now they had the most broad-based product portfolio addressing all types of customers from enterprises to medium businesses to home consumers.”
Swaminathan’s strength has been in forecasting trends. HP was the first to recognize the shift from desktops to notebooks. Little wonder then that the company enjoys a fat 40 percent market share in the notebook segment.
Explains the man: “In a competitive market, being one step ahead makes all the difference. We made our bets on laptops in 2004. We saw the mobile computer becoming more affordable, and also being not just a computing device but also an entertainment device.”
The other first to Swaminathan’s credit is the use of celebrity endorsement when HP signed up film actor Shah Rukh Khan in 2005. “As the growth moved from big cities to small, we had to think of building a strong communication and connect with audiences in those markets. What better way to build that connect than SRK?”
Interestingly, Swaminathan has stayed put in India despite having several opportunities to head international businesses within HP. “I consider myself lucky to have worked in India over the last decade. We have been living in revolutionary times, and the learnings are unmatched.
We are still in the early days of this revolution, and the opportunities are enormous, so going abroad was never a career option I fancied.”
Ask him about his leadership mantra and Swaminathan says, “Think big, get a great team around you, plan in detail, roll up your sleeves, and then just do it and enjoy yourself. We tend to unnecessarily complicate things and get all wound up. In channel management my mantra is even simpler—think win-win, respect your partners, and build personal credibility.” |