“We are aiming for a growth that is faster than the market”

Vipin Tuteja,
Executive Director, Technology, Channels & International Business,
Xerox India

India has, today, around 14 million small and medium size enterprises, second-largest only to China, as figures quote. SME entrepreneurs are probably one of the most important drivers of industrial growth of the country. The health of Indian GDP and its robustness invariably depends on the health of this sector. Vipin Tuteja, Executive Director, Technology, Channels & International Business, Xerox India, while dwelling upon this fact, explains the importance of the SMB vertical to Xerox as their customers 

SMBs coming of age

“We are, today, in a market that is growing at 15% per annum. We, at Xerox, are growing faster than the market rate and what we have experienced in the past couple of years that the SMB market is growing faster than the rest of the verticals like large enterprises and government,” points out Tuteja.

The SMB space is expanding today and this has primarily happened as more and more businesses are moving out of the metro cities and penetrating into remote II and III cities. People are setting up businesses in these towns because of relatively cost-efficient infrastructure than those in the A-class cities.  Also, there are various initiatives started by state governments of late to attract more businesses in these areas and this has resulted in a large inflow of businesses that have doubled over the years. 

As a part of its strategy to leverage this growing SMB market and increase their presence, Xerox decided to zero in on top 200 city coverage. Accordingly, based on the research done by an independent agency, they selected the top 200 cities which have been growing the fastest, where businesses are growing the fastest and a lot of IT purchases have happened in the last couple of years. “The growth in these cities was also assessed based on the factors like literacy, the state GDP, economic growth, etc, after which we identified the top 200 cities.”

The top 200 cities are inclusive of metros and tier-II & tier-III cities. 

Once identified, the next task was to formulate the go-to-market strategy, whereby Xerox will be able to identify their customers and address their needs. “Since our go-to-market strategy is based on partnerships with channel, we tried to assess our existing channel coverage in those areas, whether we were present in all those top 200 cities or not and, based on that, we decided if we need to add additional or new partners to cater to the requirements of the SMB customers in these places." Just a year back, Xerox has increased its number of partners all across the country. So, today, along with Sales & Service partners, they have Sales only partners and resellers. While there are around 200 Sales & Service and Sales only partners, Xerox has 3,000 resellers working for them, who are now based out of these 200 cities. Again, to cater to the overall channel partners, Xerox has appointed two National Distributors – Redington and Global Infonet.

Unlocking SMB potential

Almost 90% of the business happens from these top 200 cities for Xerox, which include both hardware and consumables. 60% of this overall business is through large enterprises and government put together, and the rest 40% comes through SMBs.

“The offerings that we have started right from A4 printers and then going into A3. In both the A4 and A3 segments, you have the entry-level, medium-level and then the high-end printers. Normally, SMBs, from our experience, end up buying the entry or mid-end but now the definition of high-end is slowly changing. Whereas earlier high-end used to be associated only with the volume of printing that can be done, what is actually being looked at today are the enablers of that equipment which can technologically help customers. So with this idea in mind, SMBs are now starting to buy a few of the high-ends also. But primarily it is the entry and the medium-end that caters to the SMB segment.”  

Xerox has ensured that there are certain types of dedicated partners involved to attend to this SMB segment. “For our enterprise segment, we normally go through the SIs because of their capability of providing an end-to-end solution to these customers. But our 200 partners primarily cater to the SMB segment,” Tuteja explains.

Ample amount of training is also provided to the channel partners so that they can serve customers better. Xerox has strong criteria in place to identify their partners, after which they need to ensure that the selected partners have the capability to invest in the right infrastructure and manpower. There is also a structured programme introduced by Xerox to impart the right kind of training to the partners, followed by a periodic refresher programme that keeps them abreast of the information given to them earlier and to also bring them closer to the new technological changes introduced. 

samrita@varindia.com