NEWS

Matrix products are feature-rich with built-in functions at no extra cost :By -Ganesh Jivani Managing Director, Matrix Telecom

By VARINDIA - 2010-03-26

The Indian IT and Telecom market was not so hot and happening before, as it is now. The PC penetration has touched five million units this year with a growth rate of 25–26 per cent YOY, and telephone connections touching 170 million with 6 million telephone connections getting added every month. The growth of telecom is the largest growth in the world. To address such a huge requirement, telephone equipment manufacturing is hotting up and big names and third-party manufacturers like Hon Hai Precision Industry, Flextronics, SemIndia have joined the race. But there are many manufacturers who manufacture and sell under their own names like Tyco, Molex, MRO Tech, Matrix Telecom, etc. Even then, such names as Nortel, Cisco, Avaya, Siemens, Alcatel, etc. are the big and leading ones in the active telephony equipment market. Today, when we evaluate Matrix products, we learn from Ganesh Jivani, Managing Director of Matrix Telecom, that Matrix products are feature-rich and have built-in functions at no extra cost,whereas other companies generally charge extra for such value additions. And, the other strength of the company is its strong channel network.

Matrix was founded in the year 1992 as a product development and marketing company. Its first few products were PBX systems for offices and residences. The market access was limited to a few states in the formative years. Subsequently, the company has expanded its product range and the marketing network. Today, Matrix manufactures about 30 different telecom products at its modern 25,000-sq. ft. manufacturing unit at Waghodia. All these products are designed at Matrix’s independent R&D centre at Makarpura, Vadodara, which is sprawled across 15,000-sq. ft. area. This centre houses 30 per cent of the Matrix total manpower.

Matrix markets its products through about 300 channel partners in India and overseas. Matrix works very closely sharing a complementary, non-overlapping and sustainable relationship with these people. Matrix enables its channel network with frequent marketing – sales and technical training in different products.

During the journey, Matrix pioneered many unique technologies and features in its products. The company also expanded its manufacturing and R&D facilities to cater to the growing demand. Matrix products have won many awards from the government and the trade fraternity.

The focus of the company is on CPE (Customer Premises Equipment) telecom products for voice applications. Broadly, these products fall in four groups, i.e. VoIP Products, GSM Products, PBX and Switching Products and Voice Messaging Products. Under these four groups, Matrix offers a wide range of PBXs, Digital and ISDN Key Phone Systems, GSM Products, VoIP Products, Voice Messaging Products, PLCC EPAX and other specialized telecom solutions that cater to the needs of all sizes of businesses – right from small offices and home offices to large enterprises.

Ganesh Jivani says, “Matrix products are designed using state-of-the-art technologies and design methodologies. The products use latest hardware like RISC Processors, DSP Engines and other components. We comply with international standards like CE, FCC and ROHS. The software is feature-rich with lot of flexibility to adapt to different applications and environments. Overall, Matrix products are known for the functional value they offer for a given price.”

Matrix markets its products under the brand name of “Matrix”. Apart from the partners including Distributors, Dealers and Resellers, Matrix has marketing and sales staff in all the major cities to support the channel partners in marketing, sales and technical support.

After quality products, quality support makes a company actually successful. To provide prompt and cost-effective technical support its valued customers, Matrix has created 3-level support system. When a problem is reported, the first-level support is provided by the respective channel partner. System administration and configuration changes are handled without any interruption in the services. In the case of hardware failure, the faulty card or the system is replaced. This faulty card can be repaired by the partner or exchanged by the distributor. The faulty hardware is sent to Matrix Repair Centre if the fault cannot be corrected locally. These faulty cards and products are repaired and returned within four working days. In addition, Matrix maintains a Support Centre to help partners install, configure and maintain products. Engineers at the Support Centre are available on phone, fax and email.

Finally…

Matrix has a reasonably good market share of about 20 per cent in the SMB PBX-KTS segment. VoIP products are relatively new business for Matrix, but the initial response is fairly encouraging. And, the goal of the company is to establish its VoIP and GSM products in the market by the year-end.