Toshiba India Private Ltd. is planning to embark on an aggressive marketing blitz to drive its laptop business and garner a bigger pie in the Indian market. The move comes even as Toshiba is celebrating the silver jubilee of its laptop invention.
In an interaction with The Hindu, N. Sivakumar, General Manager (PC Division), said Toshiba had lined up an investment of $10 million this year. The money would primarily go into brand building, dealership expansion and strengthening of product portfolio.
He said Toshiba had now a share of four per cent in the Indian laptop market. Efforts were on to scale this up to 12 per cent by the end of this year, he added. With this focus in mind, Toshiba, he said, had decided to expand its dealership network to 850 from the existing 600. This would comprise 80 exclusive franchises who would be hawking only Toshiba products. Also, the company would expand its product offering to 30 models from the current eight.
“We will be offering products in the price range of Rs. 23,000-75,000,” he said. Wu Tengguo, Director (PC Division), said the generation next in India and other emerging markets unfortunately was not aware of Toshiba brand when it came to laptop. Therefore, the challenge lay in spreading the awareness among this segment of the population about Toshiba laptop, he said. In India since mid-1990s, Toshiba laptops were viewed only as commercial products. In this context, Mr. Tengguo pointed out that Toshiba entered the Indian market on the back of a tie-up with HCL for B2B (business to business) sales. With the dynamics of marketing changing drastically, Toshiba had now decided to focus on B2C (business to consumers), he said. The company, he explained, would bring out products to capture new segments. It would also introduce new concept products, he added.
To a specific query, he said the Indian laptop needs were now serviced from Toshiba's plant in China.
Given the low penetration of personal computers in India and given also the size of the laptop market, Mr. Tengguo felt that Toshiba would, in the medium-term, drive its focus on expanding its market share in the Indian B2C space.
