In a bid to hold on to its number one position in personal computer sales, Hewlett-Packard will ramp up its retail presence across India.

The company has around 300 outlets right now, which are excusive through franchise model.

Rajiv Srivastava, Vice-President and General Manager, HP India, told Business Line, “We will expand the number of exclusive outlets by at least about 30-40 per cent this year. But, there are many other ways for getting growth right now. We just need to make sure that we are capitalising on the explosion of whole bunch of new cities that are coming up,”

According to IDC, the company achieved 16.5 per cent market share in the fourth quarter (October-December) 2012, regaining the number one spot from Lenovo.

New cities

HP’s gameplan this year would be to reach new cities through partnerships. The company has distributors and large format multi-brand outlets such as Reliance Digital, Croma and Vijay Sales. Overall, the company right now has around 10,000 partners as point of sales, including multi-brand stores.

“We are covering around 450-500 cities (in that ball park), but we have got to go to much more than that,” Srivastava said.

He said India has more than 5,000 cities and HP India is currently present in only 10 per cent and its aim is to scale up to that level of cities (5,000) in future.

He said the company’s target for 2013 is to make HP as brand known to as much customers as possible, who can trust it as a brand.

“If these things happen, then you can be sure everything else – leadership, market share – will continue to fall in place. I don’t have to run after numbers. I have got to do the things which are making a difference to these objectives of ours,” he said.

HP India that won the 1.5 million laptops order from Uttar Pradesh Government recently, said such projects are important for any company and it will continue targeting for such projects.

“Any brand to maintain leadership, has to have a strong programme or outreach to these customers – having the product which meets expectations, service capability, meets expectations and delivery which is really suited,” he said. Also, they have got some unique requirements and therefore needs better network of sales and support, which HP can help manage and maintain these customers’ lifecycle, he said.

Govt projects

“We have also undertaken other Government projects earlier like e-choupal, Department of Post, Income Tax, UIDAI, Education, Health and many more,” he added.

> ronendrasingh.s@thehindu.co.in

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