Toshiba revamping strategy in India

After playing a marginal role in the Indian PC market for long, world’s fifth largest PC-maker Toshiba Corp is revamping its strategy in India.

The company, known for its high-end laptops in India, will shift its strategy from being a ‘premium’ brand to a ‘value’ brand and rejuvenate its marketing and sales efforts in the country.

“We would like to be known as a value player, rather than a premium brand,” N Sivakumar, Toshiba’s head of PC business in India, said.

Despite being one of the earliest entrants to the Indian notebook PC market, Toshiba has, over the years lagged behind Indian and global competitors such as Lenovo, Dell and HCL, etc. in terms of numbers.

While mainstream laptop prices have now dipped to around Rs 35,000 from around 70,000 about 4 years ago, Toshiba’s sales in India failed to reflect the trend and the company has been squeezed to the very top-end.

The netbook revolution, which saw the evolution of light and small notebooks at a fraction of the cost of the mainstream ones in 2007, took Toshiba by surprise. Even as most brands launched their own netbooks in 2008, Toshiba’s first netbook hit the shelves just around six months ago.

Even now, the brand Toshiba is still not associated with the category of netbooks or ‘value for money’ notebooks in India, even though its netbook is priced at just Rs 18,000 in India.

Sivakumar, however, says it is all about to change. “Around a year ago, the company took over all the sales and marketing operations in India,” he said. Toshiba had earlier relied on a national distributor to oversee its sales and marketing in
India.

In addition, he said, the company is also launching a series of notebooks that will stretch across the entire value range. “We currently have around 14 models in India, and will launch a few more based on the new Intel chips,” he said.

Along with the introduction of new models, the Japanese firm will also increase its sales and marketing spends in India. A month ago, for example, it managed to strike a deal with the Tata-owned Croma electronics chain to sell two of its models at their stores.

“We have gone from 7 people to 60 now in around a year. Our investments will continue to grow, both in terms hiring people and marketing expenditure,” he said.

In order to make up for its late entry in the netbook market, Toshiba is believed to have aggressive plans on the new cell-phone chip or ARM-chip based notebooks.