We will continue to focus on customizing for “Heart of India” applications

What is your view on macroeconomic situation in India today and what is TVS- Electronics doing currently to drive growth?
The adverse impact of global economic meltdown did hamper our growth in the last few quarters. Thanks to some quick and aggressive policy response by the Government and RBI, the reversal is evident in the market today. There are many positive trends like interest rates, credit offtake and stock prices which are clearly showing signs of revival. We, however, need to watch the current inflationary trends, including global commodity prices and weak external demand which could swing some adverse winds. On the whole, we believe that the Indian ICET market will bounce back in the quarters ahead. We do expect a CAGR of 20% in the segment for the next five years. The organized sector which contributes only 15% today will grow faster. The national e-governance project and renewed focus on digitization in education / community service projects will help to build IT spend.

The Indian retail story continues to be the most exciting aspect in our industry today. There are 15 million unorganized shops and establishments which need digitization. We do believe that there is large potential yet to be unleashed. The IT infrastructure in the country is now going through some serious deliberations for improvement and with better penetration of Internet and mass connectivity across India we will be seeing a different level of growth in the digitization which will lead to the impact in the ICET business substantially.
At TVS-E, we are working on a clear migration towards larger and more dominant presence in POS and Transaction Peripheral product area. The team has been engaged on this strategic framework and we believe that we can make significant inroads through our large and effective channel infrastructure. We are well known for our approach to include and engage all the stakeholders in evolving and revising our business framework. With larger bouquet of products and solutions and with right partnership across the value chain, we are poised for the next level of growth in our business building on our leadership position.

What is the overall business structure of your IT and peripheral business and the product lineup in the new focus areas?
As a business model, we are consistent with our approach to maximize our engagement in the ICET peripheral area. Our current task is to move ourselves for a dominant play in Point of Sale and Transaction domains (POST). We are leveraging our excellent relationship and understanding with our core technology partners in India and abroad. As a strategic architecture, we are evolving a clear edge over the competition through leveraging all the three sets of partnership, i.e. our Authorized Distributor Partners (ADPs), our Authorized Service Partners (ASPs) and our Application Software Development Partners (ASDPs). We believe that this “AAA” edge will work for us most effectively in the current solutions / application-oriented approach to market expansion. We can certainly claim to have the best of reach and capability in all the three areas through our extensive and well-engaged partner network.

There is so much happening in this whole area of Retail / Infrastructure / Manufacturing / Hospitability / Transportation, etc., that there is significant opportunity for sizable expansion of profitable revenue. Our products will be dominant for retail, hospitality, logistics and other industries. We have already created significant presence through range of POS printers with varying technology and customer options. We cover a wide range of POS products like Scanners, POS terminals, displays and POS systems. Our engagement in supplies and consumables business has also created good traction in the last few years and we intend taking this forward in a much more aggressive manner. In the domain of Automatic Identification and Data Capture (AIDC), we intend creating our own niche.

We will continue to focus on customizing for “Heart of India” applications with specifications to withstand varied climatic / electrical / other environmental aspects across India. The language customization has been our forte and we will build on this continuously. We have now created a larger scope of product under such wide canvas with a launch of INDIPOS range of products.

We believe that India has to be looked as “Bharat” in the product development and customization perspective.

In the last few years towards this imperative, we have consolidated our manufacturing / supply base infrastructure to build a high degree of flexibility in delivery and customisation for our end consumers. Our lead times are highly flexible and we deliver across India as required with complete backup of installation and service support.

What is your approach in distribution and channel management?
TVS-Electronics has a consistent policy of working closely with all the tiers in the distribution network. We strongly believe that there is a clear value and contribution, which all the three tiers bring to our business. As a company, we have been consistent in our approach in managing the network with good engagement and mutually supportive programs. We believe that this is our cutting-edge advantage over others in the current competitive landscape and we will build on the same to stay ahead and sustain our leadership in the market. Our channel connect programme “Sanskriti” is being revitalized to make more meaningful engagement across India adding the required regional flavour as appropriate.

We must acknowledge the excellent support by our large number of partners in our two decades of successful journey in the Indian market. There is substantial opportunity to leverage these engagements for definite benefit to our consumers and rewarding business opportunities to our partners.

What are you doing to ensure your partners grow and provide details about your initiatives in this area?
TVS-Electronics has always been acknowledged as supportive and professionally engaged with the overall growth of the partner network. We continue to follow the same strategy with more dedicated engagement with our partners. We have been working on the overall enhancement of skill sets through training and development and driving more customer orientation amongst all the partners so that we are able to create a compelling edge of “customer-centricity” together. We believe that in the current challenging times a value-based engagement with all the partners and serious and significant approach in creating customer loyalty is by far the best way to maintain your leadership. We are working together to make this a collective win for everybody in the industry. It is also important in the current context constantly induct fresh thinking and engagement and at the same time allow the flexibility across the fraternity without restricting any thought leadership from anybody.

TVS-E is well known for its channel-friendly policies and support. We were the first to start engaging the third-tier partners through a structured ADP Program (Authorized Dealer Partner Program) in 1999. Our Channel activities have originated from the national level and penetrated to the regional level. These programs have had a positive impact across all regions. TVS-E spends on an average about 2–3 per cent of their total money spent on programs toward enhancing products and application skills of our partners. We also support the channels for actual operation in the market by assisting them with live product demos to the customer. Also we conduct programs like “Direct-To-Retailer”, “Value Adding Partners”, “POS Business Partners”, etc. We are now building this up with an additional set of partnership with software / solution providers, who are providing significant contribution in the IT Peripheral domain on its growth and relevance to the consumer. Our new ASDP program is architecture for customer- oriented options by integrating our strong ADP program and significant presence through our authorized service partners (ASPs).

Together, we believe we can create the required impetus in the industry to drive IT penetration at significant levels which will help us grow our individual business as well as the overall industry size.

What is TVS-E Servicetec all about and what is your plan in this business?
TVS-E Servicetec was carved out as a separate business with a deliberate attempt to redefine the service footprint and capability in the IT / telecom landscape of India. In the last two years, this business has seen great strides in various domains ranging from IT, telecom, banking, retail and home entertainment segments. With our vast and well-spread network of partners (ASPs) and a good mix of our own dedicated teams, we have expanded our service offerings across the range of products in various formats to match the end customer needs. We have well- integrated lines of businesses, i.e. tech support, back to bench, at stores, onsite offerings and dedicated repair factories in various specific modules which are customized for many new emerging segments of products. We do believe that our architecture is largely scalable with inbuilt capabilities of skills / competency development of our service technicians in large scale across India. Key initiatives like Centre of Excellence (COE), “Parts Net” infrastructure for SCM and the most powerful IT infrastructure in the SAP platform covers end-to-end engagement right from customer intervention to a successful completion of service engagement both physical and through remote support.

We are happy about our growth in this business and we are now making sure that all there is a clear brand advocacy and value proposition in our offerings across product categories. We drive brand neutrality by offering dedicated and customized solution as appropriate including exclusive branded stores as required.

What is your future plan?
TVS-E will continue its focus on ICET domain with more dominance engagement in an end-to- end manner in the Point of Sale and Transaction (POST) area. With the current low levels of IT penetration, we believe that we are well poised for substantial growth in the domain with our wide range of products and solutions. Our added significant play with supplies and consumables and in the customer support area will be highly synergistic for our customers in getting one-stop solutions in an end-to-end manner. As TVS-E is built on the foundation of “Trust, Value and Service”, we build our strength through our dedicated teams which constantly strive for leveraging the excellent partnering opportunity across India. We will continue this to win together in the marketplace.