Ajit C Director – Sales & Marketing, One For All, Universal Electronics India

UEI’s One For All line of remote controls, comes in the price range of Rs.590/- to Rs.5,995/-, is compatible across multiple brands and can be connected to a maximum of 8 devices, such as TVs, CD/DVD players, set-top boxes, cable TVs, DTHs and the like.

What is your marketing and distributing structure? 
We are the first to hit the global market with remote control features such as “Macros” and favourite channel scan. The timing for a concept like Universal Remote Controls (URCs), though new in India, is right as the high-end consumer market is booming right now. We have currently tied up with about 75 consumer electronic chains and retail stores across the top cities of the country and we plan to touch about 300 stores by the end of December 2008.

We also plan to aggressively foray into tier-II and tier-III cities. The largest retailers like E-Zone, Reliance Digital and Croma are carrying our products and they also keep coming up with various schemes for our various lines of products. We also plan to give away Free Standing Display Units (FSDUs) to the stores and to have trained OFA dedicated promoters in the retail outlets to explain the concept of URC and the One For All products to prospective customers. We have also set up a customer support centre in our Bangalore office to attend to customers’ queries and troubleshooting.

Why have you chosen Compuage as your ND? What are your expectations from them? 
Compuage understood the product well and their strong network across cities made it an obvious choice for us to tie up with them. Compuage has 60 offices across the country, which makes us enlist their support for all our sales and logistics needs.

How many channel partners are you currently working with? Any plans to increase them? 
We are currently working only with Compuage as a national distributor and 200 other partners. We currently have presence in NCR, Delhi, Lucknow, Jaipur, Chandigarh in the North and we plan to reach out to Ludhiana and Dehradun by the end of this quarter. In the west, we have our presence across Mumbai, Pune and Ahmedabad and plan to take it to Surat and Baroda in this quarter. Similarly, in the south we have our presence in Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad and Cochin will soon see our products in this quarter. We plan to have 500 partners by the end of this quarter.

Any channel plans like schemes, training, etc. for this quarter or festive season? India is new to the concept of the Universal Remote Controls and hence a lot of consumer education is needed to build the concept and therefore we are currently focussing on training the sales force. We have our trained demonstrators and self- promoters in most of the formatted stores and wherever we cannot have our demonstrators we are training the sales force.

How do you plan to tap the market? 
One For All is already present in all the major formatted stores across India and we also plan to penetrate our presence into the consumer electronic stores. We are also working towards educating the Indian consumer about the concept of Universal Remote Control by having our trained sales force in these stores. We also have an India-based call centre to support our Indian customers.

What are the product ranges that you have? 
One For All offers 9 models of Universal Remote Controls, which vary in design and complexity. Our prime line range offers basic replacement remote controls, which can support up to two devices. Prime Line models are ideal for people who want replacements for their old or broken remote controls.

Comfort Line range is ideal to suit the needs of our consumers who are constantly looking for ways to improve the comfort and convenience of their home. This range is ergonomically designed to blend in the palm of your hands to give it a comfort grip. It supports up to five devices. The further advanced ranges include the Stealth, Digital and Kameleon which cater to the high-end consumer. This range is sophisticatedly designed and can operate up to 12 devices.

All our products are priced between Rs.590/- and Rs.5,995/- and are retailed through consumer electronics and other major retail stores across India.

How will you promote your brand? 
We are undertaking a lot of below-the-line activities – some in-store branding and focussing mainly on training the in-store promoters and the sales force.

What are the challenges before you and how you plan to overcome them? 
The most challenging part is that the concept of Universal Remote Controls is still at a very nascent stage in India and therefore the consumer needs to be educated in order to sell the concept to them, and that is what we feel is the most challenging part right now.

However, we believe that through sustained marketing and PR, the wary consumer can be moulded and convinced. We have taken care of the little things from our end such as: We have made sure that the usage of the product is easy to adopt. Our in-depth manuals are self-explanatory and well-drafted to help anybody set up the remote. Furthermore, our customer service call centre is fully operational to help solve any problems that might arise, over the phone itself, instead of expecting the product to be brought over to the service station.

Indians are open to exploring new gadgets and gizmos and furthermore have the ability to do so. With this thought and crossed fingers, we hope to see smooth surfing!