Technology is getting penetrated in every nook and corner of the country, this exemplary development in technology percolation is motivating us to strengthen our relationship with channel partners in 2016
Core strength as a leader
For me leadership is all about taking the right decisions at the right time, having a clear vision for the company of what lies ahead and managing people effectively to bring out the best in them. I would say my core strength as a leader at SanDisk is my ability to create a competent team and efficiently manage the company’s overall operations across the country. The industry knowledge that I have gained through my experience of over two and half decades has helped me enormously in steering SanDisk’s development towards growth and nurturing the brand to become the market leader in South Asia region.
Distinctive Decision Making
Being the Country Manager at SanDisk, I work in collaboration with the Sales and Marketing team and the management at the regional and HQ levels, thus taking into account the ideas and feedback of all the teams across the country, before taking any organisational or strategic decision. Under my supervision, my teams have conceptualised and delivered multiple brand and consumer campaigns which has led to top-of-the-mind brand recall amongst consumers and gradually increasing sales for our wide array of storage products. On the marketing front, SanDisk has always gone extra miles to engage with our customers pan India through brand campaigns, PR and Social Media.
With the new product launches SanDisk has brought innovation in the industry, benefitting the consumers, channel partners, retailers and ecommerce partners alike. In the past one year, we have launched a wide range of new offerings under Mobile Memory Solutions (MMS) category for India’s growing mobile-savvy generation who are persistently dealing with the issue of storage in handheld devices. We launched new devices like SanDisk Ultra Dual USB Drive 3.0, SanDisk iXpand Flash Drive and SanDisk Connect Wireless Stick to help customers transfer and share content seamlessly across devices. Additionally, SanDisk also extended its offerings in the memory card segment with the launch of SanDisk Ultra microSDXC UHS-I 200GB card: the world’s highest capacity microSD card for use in mobile devices.
In Sept 2015, SanDisk announced a breadth of new offerings in its Solid State Drive (SSD) category including its range of Portable SSDs – SanDisk Extreme 500 and SanDisk Extreme 900. SanDisk’s retail SSD portfolio includes – SanDisk SSD PLUS; SanDisk Ultra II SSD; SanDisk Ultra II mSATA SSD, and SanDisk Extreme Pro SSD in the internal SSD range.
On the marketing front, we have expanded our brand presence to 35 cities through a series of focused brand campaigns, distribution and market development initiatives. In 2H 2016, we ran a unique campaign in partnership with Hungama.com called “Bollywood ka Hungama, SanDisk ke Saath”, for a duration of 6 months. During the campaign period, SanDisk consumers could avail free subscription for Hungama app along with free music and video download, with the purchase of SanDisk Ultra & Extreme range of products. The partnership that was aimed towards attracting the music-loving community of the country helped us in broadening our consumer base. It was one of the most successful campaigns in the industry.
The phenomenal growth of SanDisk in India has also affected the flash/storage industry to a great extent. We are part of leading industry bodies like ISA, ICA and MAIT which play a major role in shaping the industry.
Channel Vision for 2016
For SanDisk, channel partners have played a major role in our success in India and we truly value their contribution. We work closely with our channel partners to educate and motivate them for selling SanDisk’s broad range of storage products across the country. We run incentive programs for both channel partners and retailers and conduct regular training programs to provide our partners with relevant and timely product updates.
Technology is getting penetrated in every nook and corner of the country, thus increasing the demand for storage solutions at a tremendous pace. This exemplary development in technology percolation is motivating us to strengthen our relationship with channel partners in 2016 through various training programme. A strong rapport with channel partners will help us in establishing our footprint not just in Tier-I but also in Tier-II regions of the country.
Last year, we launched SanDisk Advantage Training Program, an m-Learning program that serves as a strategic tool for engaging with the distributed sales force and for selling SanDisk’s range of superior and high margin products. The system has been carefully-designed to connect the field representative to the corporate office and vice versa and to accommodate the extremely mobile lifestyle of the average field representative. We recently won an award for this program in the Best Sales Development Category at the prestigious 3rd World Training & Development Congress Awards organized by World HRD Congress.
