Our products will be placed in over 1,000 stores by the next quarter

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What makes Siemens Gigaset foray in the Indian market?
Mobile is a vast industry and we are not competing in the same. Though statistics reflect a declining fixed line base, yet there is a huge potential to be tapped. We have already experienced this in many developed countries and are positive that the Indian market will move into direction of cordless rather than fixed line handset for in-house usage. Mobility is popular as a phenomena in India and cordless just gives consumers the same freedom from wire, both within a household premise and in an office. Also, cordless penetration is very low in Indian households. Even with fixed line, current base of 39 mn land lines landlines and with cordless penetration of just 13%, India is a great opportunity for leading manufacturers of cordless such as Gigaset.

What are your plans to place your selves at retail stores?
We are a late entrant in the Indian market. The size of this country is definitely a logistics and supply chain challenge to any product manufacturer. We just launched our products in the last quarter and are currently placed in 500 plus retail stores. We are regularly monitoring and expanding our retail channel and by next quarter, our products will be placed in over 1,000 plus stores. Lastly it is also our constant endeavor to tie up with organized retail chains like Croma, Reliance Digital, and others since our products fall into premium category.

What will be your strategy to beat competition in the Indian market?
We believe competition is always beneficial for end consumers and it keeps every product manufacturer on their toes. Our strategy is to offer feature rich products with unique sales points for every product category. Most of our models launched currently are made in Germany and we are the only company offering the same. We always desire Indian consumers to experience the same international quality products as being used by our customers in developed countries.

Tell us about your product map for the Indian market for 2010.
Today, no manufacturer can ignore the growing power of the Indian economy. Our current product portfolio is just a starting point for us as far as the Indian market is concerned. Let me not specify any particular product model for future, but I can assure that Gigaset is working back home and will ensure that products with unique sales points are launched here. In the coming months you will notice at least half a dozen products with such USP being offered to Indian consumer which will all be value for money products.

What innovations are we seeing on the design side in this segment?
We have some unique products such as C580, which is the only cordless phone in Indian market with 150 number phone book memory. Model A 685 is a cordless with answering machine being operated from handset rather than from base. Similarly, model S 880 is the only model with color display feature in 2.4 Ghz range.

Heena Jhingan
heenaj@cybermedia.co.in