Vikas Gupta:- How is ZyXEL looking ahead for the year 2013?
Executive Director Distribution Channel & Business Development, ZyXEL Technology
Pinaki Chatterjee:- We are looking at 150% growth in the year 2013
Vikas Gupta:- What sort of networking solutions ZyXEL is providing to SMB’s?
Pinaki Chatterjee:- ZyXEL is one of the only brand who is carrying 20 different technologies under one roof, our 80-90% revenue comes from Telecom, SMB and Enterprise segment. We have products and solutions for Channel, SI, corporates, End customer’s and different verticals like Defense, Railways, Govt., Hospitality, Education, Real Estate and many more, ZyXEL is one of the only brand who is offering Channel, SMB, Enterprise and Telecom Technologies under one roof and we can give solutions which is independent of any kind of media. Our core strength lies in solutions on DSLAM’s, GEPON, GEPON, FTTx, ETTH, Metro Ethernet, LTE, SMB Wireless and different kinds of Residential Gateways used for triple play services apart from these we have complete range of regular networking products and solutions stating from 5 port unmanaged switches to L3 managed switches and home class wireless routers.
Vikas Gupta:- Please share some details about ZyXEL ‘s channel policies and partners in India?
Pinaki Chatterjee:- ZyXEL is strictly a channel friendly company, we work in Regional Distribution model and have more than 14 regional distributors across the county in different states taking care of our business, we closely work with System Integrators and ensure their business interest is well taken care off, we never bypass our distributors or partners
Vikas Gupta:- What is your vision for next five years in India?
Pinaki Chatterjee:- With the kind of unavoidable portfolio we are carrying and the commitment we have to grow in this country will surely make us one of the prominent and preferred brand in India as we are in Europe and other major countries, in next 5 year we would be growing rapidly with more than 100% growth YOY.
Vikas Gupta:- Is company planning to come up with any new technology or plans under its R&D?
Pinaki Chatterjee:- ZyXEL in its core is an OEM and Real Innovator, we never believed in stamping our brand name on other OEM’s products, we have in house manufacturing and fully owned R&D unlike others who are marketing OEM’s product’s under their brand name and does not own any R&D or even if they have they are outsource. ZyXEL constantly strive to develop and innovate new technologies and products and market them, if History is seen ZyXEL was the first to invent data fax modems around 25 year back and in our core our innovations and R&D keeps us ahead than others when it comes to technology and quality products.
Vikas Gupta:- What are some of the biggest selling products for ZyXEL in India for the year 2013? Any prediction for the year 2014?
Pinaki Chatterjee:- Over all most of our products have many USP’s and are not trade of the mill products but having said that we are quite strong in our DSLAM’s, GEPON, SMB Wireless and Switching apart from home class retail products, we are constantly investing in our R&D to develop new products and technologies and in 2014 we will come up with many new products to bring high end technologies in the reach of common man.
Vikas Gupta:- What is the strategy of the company to motivate its channel partners? Any schemes, promotions and incentives that you would want to share with the channel in particular?
Pinaki Chatterjee:- ZyXEL as a brand do not believe in Dumping stocks by showing schemes as its quite unreal at this juncture due to market condition, in real channel most of the time suffers due to the same as they get trapped in such mouse trap by competition brands, instead we belief in giving upfront margins and also run schemes based on sales out model and not on stock in model , time to time we run these schemes which increases the visible margins instead of invisible incentives and so called dumping based schemes. These of course make us face few challenges but it’s worth it as we want to keep our partners focused on business instead of worry about dumped stocks end of the day.
Vikas Gupta:- How important is the channel partner community for ZyXEL?
Pinaki Chatterjee:- ZyXEL with such a huge portfolio and with 80% revenue coming from SMB/SME & Telco Segment we cannot move ahead and grow without channel but for ZyXEL channel community is quite big in compared to any other brands, we have different channel for different segment, we are successfully addressing Telecom Segment for which our customers are our channel to sell our products to end customers, for SMB and Enterprise we have SI’s who are our channel to sell our solutions to our customers like Railways, Defense, Govt, Education, Hospitality, Real Estate etc. for retail we are our retail channel and these are addressed through our Regional Distributors. We strictly follow our channel policies and ensure profitability for our channel partners. We are constantly making efforts to increase our partners across India and Sub-continent
