?We are confident of bouncing back strongly?

Backed by large order deals, Taiwanese PC maker Acer is looking at bouncing back during the December quarter, after losing its ranking in the pecking order. It had slipped to fourth place from second conceding market share to rival Hewlett-Packard and Lenovo, according to Gartner?s Q3 report. S Rajendran, chief marketing officer, Acer India, tells Debojyoti Ghosh that Acer is looking at maintaining its leadership in the education segment and strengthening its presence in verticals such as government, BFSI, telecom and infrastructure. Excerpts:

Acer, which experienced a rise in market share early this year has now dropped to fourth position, according to Gartner?s latest report. What went wrong?

Acer closed the quarter with 10.8% market share for (July-September, 2011) as per the Gartner report. Market performance in quarters are transient owing to various factors that influence the market share positions of companies such as large orders, product stocking by channel partners.

At Acer, we ensure our business operations follow a sustainable model which is healthy for all our stakeholders. As part of our channel strategy, we plan and maintain healthy stock levels with all our partners across tier I and tier II to avoid overstocking of products in the marketplace. In the recent past, fluctuations in foreign exchange also created discomfort as product prices had to be increased to compensate for the rupee depreciation and this affected sales during the festive season. Our large orders are due for execution in the December quarter and we are confident of bouncing back strongly in Q4.

What kind of growth do you see from the current levels?

We have historically had a y-o-y growth of 25%. We will continue to witness double digit growth this year too. In the past, we have been typically growing ahead of the industry and we will continue to look forward to this level of growth. For 2012, given the current spate of disruptions in the ecosystem such as adverse forex rate, high inflation, the recent natural disaster in Thailand, induced shortage in hard disk drive (HDD), it is difficult to predict industry growth rates at the moment.

In the coming quarters, what will be the key growth drivers for Acer?

We are currently focusing on strengthening our market share on specific verticals such as education, government, BFSI, telecom and infrastructure. We are looking at maintaining our leadership in the education sector and gaining at least 2% in the small and medium business space.

To increase our current market share and increase our footprint in the consumer space, we adopted an aggressive go to market strategy. The company laid out this strategy early this year and has successfully reached out to 875 towns. As of today we are operating 3,000 plus stores across the country. The company plans to add another 2,000 stores in the next six quarters.

What is your strategy for the mobile PC market in India? How many units are you planning to sell in the mobile PC segment?

We have taken a multi-pronged approach to reach out to both consumers and the enterprise division. We have focused on refreshing our products skews with new ID?s, interesting configuration and launched new categories such as ultra book and tablets that are fast catching up in the market place.

We will focus on launching feature-rich products with good configurations packed with the latest technology; which are highly portable at affordable prices. We will also focus on providing innovative and simplified solutions where customers can resolve their issues virtually with minimal communication or human interface.

In the existing situation, we will strategically focus on the mobile PC segment and will target between 1,75,000-2,00,000 units every quarter.

What are your plans to grow beyond India?

The Asian market continues to be a high growth area with high adoption levels and we continue to build our market share in our neighbouring countries. Acer India addresses the requirements of Bangladesh and Bhutan. The core team from India focuses on business development, while logistics and service fulfillment is directly managed by our overseas facilities.