Interviews

Gautam Ghosh Country Manager – India, ViewSonic Technologies India Ltd.

by VARINDIA 2010-03-10

ViewSonic is a worldwide leader in visual display products for businesses, consumer electronics, education and professional markets. The company offers a complete line of innovative LCD and CRT desktop displays, digital televisions, projectors and visual devices that are all designed to make the customer’s visual experience easier and more enjoyable. Today, ViewSonic is leading what it calls the visual revolution, where the display – whether it is on the desk, on the wall or in your hands–– becomes the focal point for accessing and controlling both information and entertainment. As a worldwide Visual Technologies leader, ViewSonic is well positioned to help lead this transformation from a “PC-centric” to a “Display-centric” world. In an exclusive interview to VARIndia, Gautam Ghosh, Country Manager – India, ViewSonic Technologies India Ltd., reveals company’s plans for the Indian market.

What are your plans for the AMJ quarter?

We want to keep up the momentum and plan to move into the B- and C-class cities as we have concentrated ourselves very well in the A-class cities. We are looking at making inroads into the D-class cities also.

How do you plan to hit these markets?

We will focus on brand promotion in these cities. We certainly want to have residential representatives there, but our main focus would be on the promotion of our products. We want to replicate the same in the B- and C-class cities what we have done in the A-class cities.

Give us some details about the ViewSonic Finch Club?
Through ViewSonic Finch Club, partners get benefits like wide product offerings to meet their customer’s needs, style and colour offerings to complete the desktop solution and an award-winning brand for peace of mind. Strong channel programmes and promotions make it easy to sell ViewSonic products. As a ViewSonic Finch Club Member, dealers can take advantage of promotional tools and marketing resources that make it profitable to promote the ViewSonic line. Right now, we have 250-registered Silver Finch Master dealers and we have more than 1,000 registered members. Amongst the members whosoever has done well, we want to legitimise them as our resellers.

What are the new verticals you plan to target?
ViewSonic apparently has the advantage of cutting across all verticals because in each size category, we have five to six different models. We, more or less, target all the verticals whether it is SMBs/SMEs, education, hospitality, etc. I would say it is more of a horizontal product range, and requires very vertical approach, which we are going to do now. Last year, we formed SI VAR Forum for our partners and these SIs and VARs concentrate on a particular vertical. Now, we are going to segregate them.

ViewSonic has been awarded as Number One in the 19-inch category. So, how do you take the competition from LG and Samsung?
We have always believed in breaking rules of the game. Our advantage is always being technologically advanced as compared to others; product and technology innovation has always been our strength. ViewSonic was one of the companies to bring LCD monitors in the market six to eight years back.

In ViewSonic, one thing is for clear that we are the only company which only makes and thinks display. There is a big difference between our competitors because all our synergy, resources, goods go into R&D. We do not sell washing machines, we do not sell micro ovens; so our focus, our heart, our soul, everything is in display and we invest in terms of resources and manpower.

We have recently launched VLED, i.e. LED-based monitors globally, which are the only monitors in the world to have 12000:1 contrast ratio on an LED. Our 26 inches VX series has about 4000:1 contrast ratio, with the software called optical, which is as per the National Television specifications. It has colour spectrum, which goes up to 102 per cent as against in the normal LCD, which is 70 to 80 per cent. So, these are the new products that we are bringing in, which will keep motivating to give a very good experience to the consumer in the country.

How do you plan to improve the service support?
We are, as of now, improved, but of course continuous improvement is required. We have very good partners, who give good backing support, spare parts, logistics and TPR support. We have 60 service centres in the country. We have RT Outsourcing and Accel Front Line as our third-party service providers.

What are your plans for the channel partners?
Last year, we launched a six months programme called “Barsaat main tak dhina dhin”. It was very successful and we rewarded our partners by giving them good back-end incentive and sending them abroad. We will be launching more such kind of channel schemes which will be equally exciting. Moreover, we have lined up lots of training programmes this year where we will have regional training programmes and also bring entire channel community under one roof.

What benefits ViewSonic gives to its partners?
We have a wide range of products. Dealers can address any kind of verticals they want to like gaming, graphics, cyber cafes, etc. Our monitors are integrated with speakers, microphone and cameras. By dealing with ViewSonic, the channel gets a good opportunity to cater to all the verticals they want to. So, that is the advantage compared to others.

What kind of growth you are experiencing?
ViewSonic is experiencing 100-per cent growth. We are targeting 200-per cent growth for the next year. We believe in growing year by year and we believe “aim for the sun and you will land up on the moon. So, we are targeting the sun.

Any message for Channel Partners?
We have got support from them and hope to get support in the years to come as well. Keep doing the good work!!!