To keep up with India’s growing demand for electronics, global players are adopting a simple formula – expand distribution channel with more skilled and adept distributors. T.H. Kuang, vice president of Taiwan-headquartered Phison Electronics Corp. speaks with Baishakhi Dutta of the Electronicsforu.com Network about the skills they are looking for in new distributors and the importance of the Indian market.
Q) How do you view the current state of the Indian market?
The Indian electronics industry is gradually growing. The country has opened its doors to many foreign players. The Indian market has developed significantly in the last four years and as a result our India business has also grown in the last few years. Currently, India is one of the most important markets for us. India’s economy is growing fast along with a very promising market. We definitely consider India as one of our most important business regions. The demand for our product is also pretty high in India.
Q) Are you planning to increase your presence in India?
Yes, we have distributors in other parts of the world and now we are looking for some strong partner presence in India—to be our distributors and agents.
Indian market is extremely big. It is nearly 20 times bigger than that of Taiwan. Hence, in order to penetrate deep into such a vast market, we need more resources i.e. distributors/agents in India. Apart from distributors, we also want to work with EMS companies, who know the India market well and has knowledge in our domain. We are also looking for more hardware-system-design and system-integrating partners in India.
Q) What qualities do you look for in distributors that you hope to work with?
We would like our distributors/agents to be capable of doing specific effective promotions with sales commitments. We expect them to have a good market presence and relationship with the end customers, along with a good sales channel in India.
Q) Are you planning to set up your own office in India?
Opening up an office in India is very much on our radar. If everything goes well then we will be inaugurating our India office by the end of 2019. As far as the location is concerned, we are still planning and surveying on that.
Q) How long have you been doing business with Indian companies?
We are already in business with Indian companies since 2014. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has indeed given a big boost to the ‘Make in India’ initiative, which in turn have helped us enter the Indian market. To support the ‘Make in India’ policy, Phison has partnered with local EMS companies in India. The demand for our products has increased in the Indian market over the last couple of years and our business has started growing in India.
“We are also looking for more hardware-system-design and system-integrating partners in India”
Q) How has business in India been for you over the recent years?
Our India business has been good in the past few years. Our global revenue was $1.36 billion in 2018, with no debt. According to our prediction, by the year 2022, the global NAND storage market revenue will reach $80 billion. For India, if we can gain only five per cent of the predicted market share, then exclusively our India revenue will be $4 billion.
Q) What are the roadblocks you encounter in the Indian market?
The primary problem that we have encountered while doing business in the country is transportation. Since India is a vast country, traveling from one place to another is very time-consuming.
Q) What platforms do you use to promote the sales of your products in India?
Talking about promotions, currently, we do not have any media partner in India. All our business at present is supported by local Indian agents and distributors.
Q) What is more important for you—domestic sales in Taiwan or exports?
Currently, Phison’s aim is to expand its market as far as possible and gain some good attraction from customers. So, keeping the broad target in focus, we are targeting the global markets and consider domestic sales as well as exports equally important for our growth.
Q) Which are the top three countries that you export to?
We export to almost all parts of the world. However, America, the European continent, India and the ASEAN countries are on the top. Of them, we consider India to be one of the markets with the highest potential.
Q) For your products or services, who is more important—the technical decision maker or the commercial decision maker?
At Phison, we consider both the roles to be of equal importance. However, taking a particular call entirely depends on the products that we are dealing with. So, the decision varies from time to time.
| Solutions by Phison Phison is a Taiwan-based manufacturer of NAND flash controllers. In modern tech solutions, the key components that build the solutions include sensors, computing, connectivity, artificial intelligence (AI) and of course, storage. The data storage facility is a very important point of focus today, given the vast amount and variety of data being generated. Phison’s main focus lies in storage technology. The product portfolio offers NAND storage solutions surrounding technologies like SSD, USB, eMMC, UFS, SD and so on. The solutions can be used in a variety of applications in consumer, commercial, embedded or enterprise use cases. |
