Mr Sanket Kulkarni, the Channel Sales head of ZyXEL India, shares his views with ITVOICE – on company business & future outlook 2014-15.
Vikas Gupta )- How is ZyXEL looking ahead for the year 2014?
Mr Sanket Kulkarni )- This year is really exciting for us, as lots of expansion is happening in ZyXEL. New office and heavy investment in India from Head Quarter Taiwan is moving up things. For the first time in the history of ZyXEL in India that horizontal expansion is happening. We are covering the area geographically. Plus the recent tie up Redington is the best thing happen in First Quarter of 2014. Today channel is surely looking for new brand options in channel business for the current channel brands have reached the level saturated and are left with no margins. This has unleashed best opportunity for us and for the channel partners as we don’t have limited fast moving products but we come with complete product range. So partners have an opportunity to focus on consumer, SMB & enterprise segment with us. Hence, by the year end the market would see ZyXEL at a very different platform all together.
Vikas Gupta )- What sort of networking solutions ZyXEL is providing to SMB’s segment?
Mr Sanket Kulkarni )- ZyXEL opens up the technological possibilities at their best for all the segments like SME, SMB, Corporate, large corporate, government or telecom. ZyXEL endeavors to make technology affordable. And by that virtue we benefit all the market verticals. We introduced the technology to telecom till the technology is matured enough to sustain the heavy traffic of the operator. Once its matured enough, we reengineer it to make it affordable and suitable for SME, SMB and Corporates.
Starting from physical network on layer 2 till application control on layer 7, we have all the solutions for SMB including Switching, Routing, FTTX, Manage Wireless, Security, UTM Firewall, 3G, 4G, Powerline Adapter and EOC.
Vikas Gupta )- Please share some details about ZyXEL ‘s channel policies and partners in India?
Mr Sanket Kulkarni )- Recently we restructured all the policies related with the channel. Massive changes have been brought from Regional Distribution structure to National Distribution structure. The primary aim is to increase reach in all pockets of India. We have regional distributors at many locations who are doing quite well so we will continue with them & keep on supporting them. Plus we are increasing our reach in SI segment and support them with our latest solutions.
Vikas Gupta )- Is company planning to come up with any new technology or plans under its R&D?
Mr Sanket Kulkarni )- As explained earlier, ZyXEL introduces. We introduced the technology to telecom till the technology is matured enough to sustain the heavy traffic of the operator. Once it’s matured enough, we reengineer it to make it affordable and suitable for SME, SMB and Corporates. Going forward there will be lots of products on femto cell/small cell and 4G/LTE, apart from further strengthening of 3G portfolio.
On the solution side, we have recently launched hospitality solution portfolio and on the roadmap we have further security products and education solutions.
We have already launched 3G Products in market which was missing in our portfolio.
Vikas Gupta )- What are some of the biggest selling products for ZyXEL in India for the year 2014?
Mr Sanket Kulkarni )- GEPON (OLT and ONUs), DSLAM, IPDSLAM (Chassis and CPE), MSAN (Chassis, Pizzabox and CPE). For far we been number one in the country regarding these product lines and won number of awards and accolades from media and other organisations. We shall taste similar success in near future in switches, enterprise wireless and firewalls.
Vikas Gupta )- What is the strategy of the company to motivate its channel partners? Any schemes, promotions and incentives that you would want to share with the channel in particular?
Mr Sanket Kulkarni )- Our partners are our assets and we always believe in win – win situations. We concentrate in long term relations and we maintain the same. We always make sure that our business is profitable for them. Our business structure is such that our partners get not only upfront margins but they get good back end support as well. In addition to that, we have just announced loyalty program which makes real excitement for the distributors. Quarterly incentives have also been introduced to better their bottom line .
Vikas Gupta )- Please throw some light on your recent tie-up with Redington ?
Mr Sanket Kulkarni )- The tie-up with Redington is to expand our channel market with right partnership. Redington by its strength is complementing us in terms of reaching out to the right partners and do city wise mapping. As today we have seen tremendous growth not only in Metro city but also in all tier cities where most of the places Redington has its strong presence. Even partners are very comfortable working in this new structure. Our journey with Redington shall be long and strong.
