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Ron Goh is habituated to flying high. After all for ten years, he was flying fighter jets for Singapore Air Force. He reminisces on those days in the mid-70s, “Those were exhilarating times. When I used to fly down to India, it used to be so very different,” he sighs. But, now, as a vice president, commercial and channel sales (Asia Pacific/Japan), EMC, he finds the Indian small and medium businesses (SMBs) to be quite the same across the world. And yes, he does not like to refer to them as SMBs, but as emerging businesses.
The past few years have been quite eventful for EMC. The company started operations in 2000, and now is the number two in the storage market. With revenues in the range of Rs. 398 crore, EMC is quite bullish about its prospects in India. Goh had recently come down to India for the launch of its SMB program. He spoke to Shashwat Chaturvedi from Cyber Media News, detailing the program and other such issues. Excerpts.
What is latest initiative being rolled out in India?
It is called as the EMC Velocity Partner Program in India. The program has been launched successfully in Australia, China, etc. With India, we start the South Asia roll out, followed by Malaysia and Singapore. We are also launching a SMB partner program and introducing a new line of products for the segment under the brand name Insignia.
How many partners do you intend to reach through this program?
We have close to 500 partners in the Asia Pacific region alone. In India, we have more than 50 partners spread across 30 cities. We intend to target all these partners, and also sign up new ones for the program.
Are you also trying to spread to new cities?
Indeed that is on the agenda. Our chairman, president and CEO, Joe Tucci had outlined the expansion plans. We intend to double our number of partners and are also looking at tier II cities for further expansion.
How will the partners benefit from the Velocity program?
Under the Velocity program, we would provide four things to the partners who sign up, namely, training and education, mentoring, incentive program, and business review. With this program we intend to support our partners in a better way. This program is part of the $500 million investment announcement made by Tucci.
How important is the SMB segment and what are the challenges?
SMB is a very important segment. The mid-tier segments accounts for around 15 per cent of the APAC revenues. The challenges are more or less the same anywhere across the globe. It is a myth; Indian SMB community is no different from the rest. For instance, the Chinese and the Japanese SMB segment is equally price sensitive like the Indian one.
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