Technology giant Dell is looking to develop its own system integration (SI) capability in India and bring in other high value-added services to the $17-billion domestic market.
The firm is trying to transform itself from being a hardware player to a solutions company. The services piece would plug a significant gap in its armory. In India, Dell currently lags IBM, Wipro Infotech, HP, TCS and HCL in domestic services.
Under India?s new chairman Suresh Vaswani, who was former joint CEO of Wipro?s IT services business and the chief architect of Wipro Infotech, the firm plans to pull in its whole stack of services and specialised offerings in India over time. This would mean more competition, aggressive pricing and possibly, marketshare changes in the years ahead, analysts said.
Dell is already India?s No. 1 personal computer company with a market share of 16.7% in the first quarter of 2011. The firm grew 28% in India in its first quarter ended April 2011, far above the domestic market growth of 16%-20%. It already generated more than a $1 billion from India ?Dataquest reported that in FY10, the firm totaled revenues of Rs 5,275 crore.
Dell may be wanting to leverage on the consolidation trend ? customers are placing bets with a small number of vendors as opposed to many ? to break into the services market with its story of hardware and plus solutions.
?What we would increasingly do over a period of time is to get high-value-added services like system integration. Today, we partner with other companies to win projects in India. But eventually, we would develop our own capability on SI, managed services and on applications support. It is something we are working on now,? Vaswani told FE. High value-added services would also include remote infrastructure management and large total outsourcing kind of contracts.
?India as a market is extremely strategic to Dell. My job is to make sure Dell reaches its true potential in the country,? Vaswani added. As chairman, he would also play a role in customer management and large deal management.