India’s growth potential has wooed many a global vendor and UTT is no exception. The Chinese major with reputation for SMB networking has all plans to make it big in India. SME Channels spoke to Yinwei OU, Global Director, UTT to know more about the company’s strategy.
Why are you looking at India market, as it is very price sensitive?
While Digital India, the ambitious national initiative, focuses on the improvement of its internet coverage and connection speed, enterprises are increasingly adopting WLAN to focus on mobility, IoT and etc. According to MaryMeeker’s Internet Trends Report 2016, India now has 277 million Internet users surpassing the US and second only to China. Despite this, just about 22 per cent of the Indian market is penetrated, offering scope for huge growth, particularly on mobile. We see great opportunities for UTT in India and would try to make every consumer here into a fan.
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“Stay humble. Respect the market trend. Listen carefully to what our partners and customers demand and respond quickly.”
Yinwei OU
Global Director
UTT
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India market is too big and complicated to be simply defined as price sensitive in general. The “price sensitivity” is in the context of a particular sub-market where your products are categorized into. UTT’s focus is the SMB market, where a good balance of “enterprise-level performance” and “affordable price” is the key. Fortunately, UTT is leading this sub-market in China, which is, if not more, at least an equally price sensitive market. We’re confident with our future here.
Not many Chinese / Taiwan brands have succeeded in India and those who are successful are very well established, what is your strategy to compete in this market?
Stay humble. Respect the market trend. Listen carefully to what our partners and customers demand and respond quickly. If our products can enable profitable solutions for our partners and delight our customers, they will help grow our business in India.
What is the strength of your product line and what are the ranges of products you have?
UTT is well recognized and appreciated by the SMB customers in China through enterprise-level routers, wireless access points and PoE switches at competitive prices. You may surprisingly find our products among the top in the US against those big names while having the highest customer rating.
UTT AC750W as a good example, could often been found with top 3 popularity on Amazon.com by searching “VPN Routers”, which even defeated some of the best brands in the market.
What kind of volume are you looking at from India?
As far as I can tell from the first year’s number, we’re targeting at $5M annually by 2018. We’re confident with our VPN Routers, Wireless solutions and PoE Switches.
What kind of investment are you planning to make to run the show successfully in India?
As was covered above, we want every penny to be spent on the activities that will be most effective.
Being it a series of TV advertisements, a small training session, a magazine review or even banner in the public area, we will constantly adjust our tactics and implement whatever will help.
What is your largest market globally?
Obviously, China is our largest market. We were Number One in the SMB market last year in terms of revenue and market share.
We are now moving quickly into India, North America and EMEA. I’m confident that India market will catch up very soon.
What is your manufacturing strength?
UTT has a branch office and multiple production lines in Shenzhen, a major manufacturing and hi-tech center. In addition, a 80-strong engineering team in Shanghai is what brings the difference to our products, especially against lots of re-branding products in the market.
What is your distribution strategy in India?
We will provide the best margin for channel partners, develop awareness through marketing. We will set up efficient technical support to make the business hassle free and joyful.
Why have you associated with TelExell?
TelExcell has its presence in all the major metros and several other cities across India and is supported by a distribution network of more than 300 channel partners. I’m confident that TelExcell will help UTT expand our business quickly throughout India.
