For Vertiv, datacenter market is a growing opportunity

Vertiv has rolled out its multi-city ‘Vertiv Xpress’ to expand and connect with its customer base in India, showcasing Vertiv’s capalibilities and innovations in the datacenter business. Sunil Khanna, MD & President, Vertiv India explains to VARINDIA of how such initiatives help the company in focusing on new growth areas - 

Vertiv commits to new technologies and continues to design and develop them, demonstrating clearly their interests in customers. In a move to connect and expand with its customers better and also display the latest products and technologies, Vertiv has recently rolled out its multi-city ‘Vertiv Xpress’.

“Vertiv Express is a Truck where we are displaying our products & solutions, the latest trends in technology and we are taking it across India in the next 7-8 months’ time to close to 15-16 cities, closer to our customers in IT Parks, manufacturing units and large customer sites. It is starting from Delhi first and then we will be taking it to other cities where we have our presence and where we feel we have the opportunities. Cities like Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Kolkata, Bhopal, Indore, Lucknow, and Chandigarh are in the pipeline for the trip,” explains Sunil Khanna, MD & President, Vertiv India. 

“Seeing is believing, as they say and so we want our customers to see and feel our products. For instance, customers are looking for smaller footprints of the products so that they can utilize the balanced space effectively. We have products that fit into these requirements and only when they experience them will they understand how they work,” he says. 

Channel partners are also a big part of the Vertiv Express. “They are an integral part of our company and so they are very much part of it,” says Sunil. 

Vertiv is working in a big way to expand its channel in the country, so that it can capture the opportunities and identify the areas where its penetration is still low, especially markets and cities. Also it is not cost effective to have its sales person in every market and so Vertiv is focusing big on the channel. 

Earlier Vertiv had only a few products that were routed through the channel, making the breakup as 15% through channel and 85% direct. But now it is opening all its products through the channel. So currently 40% of the business happens through channel, which will continue to expand. What requires is hand holding the partners for some time, since they have their own limitations of not having the technical expertise in every area. 

Opportunities in the market…

The Indian economy is growing, with GDP growing at 7-7.5%. The focus of the government and the industry are on digital India, e-commerce and Smart city. The government’s guideline that any critical data that is of importance to the government has to reside within the country is propelling the growth of the datacenter market. The datacenter market is growing at the rate of 35-40% and Vertiv sees this as a big opportunity. 

“Many datacenter players are coming into the country now and that is another scope for us to grow. We have come out with products and solutions by keeping theneeds of the customers in mind that help them to improve or become more competent. Players like Amazon, Microsoft, Google have datacenters in India but they are only renting datacenter space. So while the Banking, financial sector is expanding, they would like to keep their critical data within their premises. So that requires having your own server or datacenter. We came out with a very innovative product called ‘Datacenter in a Box’, which is a smart solution. We provide the complete datacenter in a box, which you just have to install it in any part of your office. And that has been a great success across all sectors,” says Sunil.

Vertiv also finds new opportunities in IT-ITeS, Telecom, Automobile, BFSI, healthcare, eCommerce as they continue to grow. “If these verticals are growing then it surely means that data is also growing, the cashless economy is getting a boost. They also need 24x7 power, and we are trying to capture all these sectors,” he says.

He further continues, “In the last 2 years, the government is spending a lot on different growth initiatives whereas the private investment is down. So our focus has shifted to the government sector like the smart city initiative, the Digital India and we have been successful in many of these.”

The SME vertical will however take some time to grow for Vertiv because of their purchasing power, and like Sunil says that the demand of this market for technologies is still low. “We are looking at the sector but today our share from it is quite low,” he says.

Vertiv has its global R&D centres in which it continues to develop technologies, meeting the requirements of its customers. It also has three state-of-art Manufacturing Plants at Ambernath and Pune in Maharashtra, with latest machineries and production technology. 

Samrita Baruah
samrita@varindia.com