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| SOMESH
SINHA
says Proview will survive any shakeout, thanks to the
new initiatives and people strengths |
Even
as the Indian hardware industry bears the brunt of the slowdown,
Proview, one of the few Indian manufacturers of monitors,
is pulling up its socks in order to grow. From new launches
to playing on price, the company is doing all it can, says
Dheeraj Kapoor
Proview
Electronics, a manufacturer of monitors, is one of the few
Indian players in this particular segment of the IT industry.
And this when others are finding the going tough. Proview,
today a Rs 70-crore company, was formed in 1993 by Somesh
Sinha along with some other professionals, and today acts
as a one-stop Indian shop offering a whole range of monitors.
Sinha, today the CMD of Proview, believes that a shakeout
in the industry is imminent with few Indian players left in
the fray, but is confident that Proview will be one of the
Indian players to emerge unscathed. “The reasons why
we believe we can survive the slowdown is that we offer a
complete range of quality monitors at a competitive price
in the market. The other thing is that we are a high focus
company concentrating on monitors, which lends us credibility
in the market. Besides, another strength is the quality of
manpower with high levels of qualification,” says Sinha,
an ex-squadron leader from the Indian Air Force. The company
presently commands six percent of marketshare in the monitor
segment and aims to increase this to 10 percent by the end
of the current financial year. The company is targeting a
turnover of Rs 100 crore by the end 2001-2002.
 The
company, initially known as Spectra Electronics, started its
operations eight years ago with the setting up of a manufacturing
facility in Parwanoo in Himachal Pradesh, which is a zero-tax
zone, at an investment of Rs 1.5 crore. The company did well
to clock a turnover of Rs 30 crore in the first year of operations.
“When we started operations, one factor that helped was
the policy of liberalisation of the economy, where no licenses
were required to start operations. We principally emerged
as a monitor supplier to many Indian computer OEMs like HCL,
Minicomp and Nexus Computers. This was the reason for the
company to do well in the early years of operation,”
says Sinha. Proview, which started with the initial capacity
of 15, 000 monitors per annum at Parwanoo first offered monochrome
monitors and thereafter moved on to non-interlaced monitors
and now to interlaced monitors.
A major milestone in the company’s journey came in 1997
when it went for a technical tie-up with the third largest
global manufacturer of monitors, Proview International, a
Taiwan-based company with a manufacturing facility in China,
and a corporate office and design centre located at Taipei.
Thereafter, Proview International formally launched the Proview
brand of monitors in the country. Says Sinha, “After
other global players entered the country, there came a need
to tie-up at an equivalent level, which resulted in our company
forging a technical tie-up with Proview International. Since
technology and safety standards were changing at that time,
we got a chance to learn from Proview International and improve
the quality of our products.”
As a result of the tie-up, the company launched MPR monitors,
which follow international safety standards in monitors, which
ensures better X-Ray and electromagnetic emission protection.
Sinha claims the company was the first to launch MPR monitors
in the country in 1997, ahead of MNC players. At the same
time, Proview also expanded and shifted from its existing
OEM-focussed business by initiating the process of setting
up regional offices, regional distributors and local dealers.
Points out Sinha, “We realised early on that survival
as a pure OEM was not sustainable in the IT industry, what
with changing environments and increasing competition. As
a result we decided to get into the process of setting up
a channel network.”
The company today has a nation-wide network of 10 regional
offices, 25 regional distributors and 300 local dealers. The
company is now planning to set up more offices in other places
such as Nagpur and Chandigarh, before the end of this fiscal.
According to Sinha, the process of nation wide building of
the channel network over the past few years is one of the
reasons why the company grows its market share even during
the slowdown. Sinha further points out that the channel network
of the company would help in tapping local assemblers competing
for small and medium tenders-and the competitive price strategy
of the company certainly helps.
In 1999, in view of the increasing growth in business, Proview
decided to set up a new manufacturing set up in the tax free
zone at Pondicherry, with production capacity of 25,000 monitors
per month. This factory went into production a year later
and together with Parwanoo, the company now has a total installed
capacity of 35,000 monitors.
Apart from channel development, Sinha says product expansion
will also help Proview in battling it out in these tough times.
The company has launched 17-inch Dynaflat monitors at Rs 11,000,
and 15-inch LCD monitors. According to Sinha, these products
will help the company in tapping the replacement market, which
is expected to grow in the next three years.
The Dynaflat monitors incorporate Sweden’s TCO safety
standards. The company has started by manufacturing 1,000
Dynaflat monitors and now aims to double this number. Sinha
is confident of 17-inch Dynaflat monitors doing well in the
market. Since the price of 17-inch monitors is constantly
dropping unlike 15 inch-monitors, which will lead to a low
price difference between 15-inch and 17-inch monitors, this
is expected to push sales of 17-inch monitors. The company
has started an exchange scheme for 17-inch Dynaflat monitors,
where it is offering them at Rs 6,900 in exchange for 14-
and 15-inch colour monitors.
Proview also launched 15-inch LCD monitors some time back
in the country, priced at Rs 28,000. The company now plans
to introduce 14-inch LCD monitors in January 2002, priced
at Rs 20,000. With the launch of 14-inch LCD monitors, Sinha
hopes that the competitive price of these monitors will prompt
people to shift to LCD monitors. The company aims to target
these monitors at software institutes and public schools and
plans to organise road shows across the country to promote
these monitors. According to Sinha, the major advantage of
these monitors is that they are stress-free and ideal for
users who work for long hours on computers.
Another effort to widen its operations came with the formation
of a trading house called Amrex Enterprise in 1997, which
distributes cabinets, keyboards and UPS systems. These products
are branded with the Proview name and manufactured in China.
Amrex Enterprise clocked a turnover of Rs 15 crore in 2000-2001,
and aims to double revenues by the end of the current financial
year, especially as the UPS business goes great guns. Amrex
Enterprise also plans to launch a Web-based camera and plasma
large screen monitors used in the advertising industry in
the near future.
The present efforts of the company is aimed at consolidating
operations, and cutting costs to see through these troubled
times in the IT industry. According to Sinha, the company
will continue to maintain a quality work force to strengthen
operations, a fact, which according to him has been neglected
in the hardware industry.
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