‘We follow a structured approach with a globally driven price policy', says Rajesh Gupta of SanDisk

Rajesh Gupta, country manager, India, SanDisk talks about his latest bouquet of products and the company's current status in India

What are your recent products in this market and how have you evolved with time?
Over the last 5 years, Sandisk in India has evolved in terms of having more coverage, reaching across 30-35 locations. The entire product portfolio is available very widely across retail segments. Among the most recent products, there are three to be named. Last week (second week of February 2014)we had announced a very exciting USB product called SanDisk Ultra Dual USB Drive, drive featuring both a micro-USB and a USB 2.0 connector in a sleek and sturdy form factor. The SanDisk Ultra Dual USB Drive is designed for Android smartphone and tablet users who need an easy way to move content such as photos and videos from their mobile devices. Second is the Sandisk Extreme PRO USB 3.0 flash drive, in the high capacity of 128 GB which has 60x faster scope of transfer than a normal USB 2.0 drives, third is the 128GB mobile micro SD card .

What is the need of the hour in the flash drive and storage space, keeping in mind that there is endless data creation which needs expanding spaces to save and store?
We are living in an environment where there is constant data explosion and hence the requirement of storing and transferring them. One of the challenges in this kind of environment is that there are multiplicity of devices and products. To bring the right kind of performance in a host device, it is very important to pair it with the right accessory like a Flash card with right specifications like speed, class and features.

What kind of price strategy do you follow in India and how does it differ outside India?
SanDisk follows a very uniform and consistent kind of pricestrategy. Since we are very widely distributed in markets, we follow a very structured approach with globally driven price policy. However, depending on the product, there are certain country based customizations and fine tuning made like in any other business.

What are your product innovations in line for this year?
From our technology perspective, we are coming up with advancements in the Flash portfolio which will get reflected in the product segment that we will launch. Till now, most of our Flash products are based on 19 nanometer process and we have started talking about 1 Y process so that it brings additional efficiencies. We are also taking about X3 technology which is one of the future of Flash but this is still in the design board and will take time to be implemented.

What is the importance of speed in recent storage appliances and equipments?
Speed and class are two things which are very important for any Flash product. Speed typically is for usage like pictures and when you are transferring your data between your USB and PC and class is a categorization which is important in terms of motion pictures. Speed and class is a very important card because it ensures the right performance of your host devices. For example, if you have taken a DSLR camera and you have not chosen the right speed in the right class card, then the function of your camera will be impacted. It is important for retailers to be trained so that they in turn they educate consumers about these factors in a non technical manner.

Do you think quality is one of the key factors for end consumers purchase decisions or do you think that India is still attracted by the price factor more than anything else?
Like most other businesses or products, pricing in flash storage businesses remains the most important decision making factor across the consumers in different categories. That is very typical of Indian market. San Disk has a complete portfolio at the mainstream level for normal day to day usage in feature phones and basic PCs and also high end smartphones, DSLR cameras, Ultra books, Mac laptops. Increasingly we are seeing usage of those products but pricing definitely remains one of the critical factors like other businesses.
How much market share do you have?
We follow CMR published report. The last one was Q3 2013 where SanDisk was reported to have around 32% of unit share.

What is the target market for your products?
The market is looked at in four target segments by us. Since our flash products are like accessories or components for one of the host devices, our target market therefore are the host devices. The first segment one is the mobile phone segment including smart phones. Secondly, our target is the PC host like desktops, laptops, Smartbooks etc. Third is the camera category for all the imaging devices for which we create series of products under SD card and micro SD card. Fourth is the storage equipments used in the data centers which is the Solid State Drive.