What started off as an engagement with five start-ups last September, including a strategic technology partnership with mobile advertising start-up InMobi, has snowballed into an engagement with 310 start-ups for Dell Technologies in India.

Alok Ohrie, President and MD, India Commercial of Dell EMC, told BusinessLine that the company is betting big on start-ups and small- and mid-market businesses for its digital transformation solutions portfolio, as he spots a huge opportunity for both start-ups and SMEs in embracing a digital future, in order to stay relevant.

Elaborating on the opportunity, he said: “India is home to 51 million SMBs, of which 40 per cent are IT-influenced, and which is estimated to grow to 90 per cent by 2020, generating a demand for a whopping $25.8 billion in IT spend by 2020. That’s a big growth area for us. Our start-up engagement has grown significantly from five start-ups — when we signed the MoU with InMobi — to 310 start-ups today, which are largely tech start-ups, some fintech and niche e-commerce start-ups. We have a separate team to address their needs, as it is a very high growth-potential business for us.”

While Dell’s engagement with InMobi involves the engineering teams of both companies working together on technology-sharing and customisation to deliver on InMobi’s unique needs, the company has not extended the same arrangement with the other 309 start-ups.

“Our engineering team can’t be working together with the engineering teams of so many start-ups. Our engagement with all the other start-ups includes helping them with financing options to buy our technology to recommending the architecture that allows them to phase out their technology acquisitions so that they could do something on-premise, something on the public Cloud; where we work along with public Cloud service providers to create that architecture. And as the start-ups grow and find merit and economic sense in pulling back to on-premise, we help them by creating that architecture. Finally, wherever possible, we give them market access with joint marketing campaigns.”

Asked what SMB clusters the company is targeting for its digital transformation solutions as SMBs generally function in clusters within an enabling ecosystem, Ohrie said: “No cluster as yet, but we are working with a Cloud service provider, that I cannot name, to tap cooperative banks in Maharashtra and Gujarat. However, we will soon target automobile ancillary units, which is a growing space.”

Dell is currently addressing a single-year opportunity of over $23 billion in India for its end-to-end solutions, fortified by a combined Dell and EMC product and services portfolio, which uniquely positions the company to provide customers with solutions that will secure their digital future with a “single window of engagement”.

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