Asus Gains Foothold in Retail Space

Asus has a two tier channel structure in the country. At the helm comes our National Distributor and below them are our regional distributors. Rashi Peripherals is our National Distributor in the country who is directly in touch with the regional distributors (RDs). While Rashi looks into all our bigger clients and customers, our RDs, who are the local partners for Asus are responsible for targeting out tier II and III customers. We have increased the number of our RDs from 12 to 15 this month, which would further help in expanding our presence in the country.

  

The markets of North-East, Kolkata, Kerala, Gujarat, Punjab and Delhi serve as the key markets for us. We are looking at venturing into new markets like Chennai and Bangalore and make our presence felt there.  We are also setting up our new offices in Ahmedabad, Cochin and Guwahati by sometime next year.

What kind of a strategy have you adopted to reach out to tier II and tier III customers?

After the metros, it is time to turn our focus to tier II and tier III towns as they are the markets that are going to fetch us good business deals in times to come. We wish to reach out to customers from these towns through our local partners and as mentioned we have employed regional partners  

 

We are going very aggressive at the retail front and have a strong strategy in place in order to enhance our retail presence. Ever since we initiated our retail expansion venture, we have been further booming and have had affirmative responses in order to further strengthen this presence. Asus has eight retail exclusive stores as of now and are planning to come up with around 100 of them by next year. To achieve this, we are looking at launching at least 4-5 stores in a month in conjunction with our loyal partners. Our first store came up in Delhi and the rest followed in Kolkata, Goa, Calicut, Jaipur and Thane. Our 8th store came up in Bhillai, which was launched last month. We intend to maintain our fostering for our customers in all these regions in order to provide access and to help them keep up with all the remarkable developments taking place in technology.

Channel is still an important medium for Asus as it acts as the main linkage between us and our end customers. We have been channel-centric right from the day we started our business in India and so we cannot think of leaving our partners behind and investing completely in retail. 

 

Is India’s channel trade getting hampered due to emergence of modern retail business?

I personally don’t feel channel trade will get hampered In spite of rise of retail business.  The significance and charm that this traditional trade holds will continue to persist for some time now unlike in most of the markets of the European countries. Both retail and channel businesses are going to co-exist in India.