Rahul Gupta

The Wistron Group, formerly Acer Inc’s Design, Manufacturing and Services operation (DMS) was formed in 2001 and now is a separate entity from Acer Brand Operations (ABO). Wistron is a top global ODM-OEM supplier for many MNC brands in the PC industry. It has recently opened an office in India for expanding its business scope to include peripherals and components, storage systems, networking and set-top boxes. Xserve India will be the service, sales and marketing arm of Wistron Group in India.

Xserve India’s strategy will be to focus on three key markets —peripherals and components (P&C) where it will undertake design and manufacturing of mainboards, cabinets and other components. The second area will be storage and networking solutions and applications (SNS&A). Here it will offer design and deployment of open architecture SAN and NAS-based storage solutions, optical storage (CDW-R and DVDs) and networking solutions. Set-top boxes will be another area of focus where Xserve will be manufacturing and supplying set-top boxes to cable operators once the government takes a call on encrypted telecast of channels. The company sees a potential market for 8 million set-top boxes in India.

Rahul Gupta, managing director, Xserve India said, “We will be catering to the OEM market, assemblers and system integrators in India. Xserve is capable of manufacturing MNC quality PC and server components of any specification, size or style, be it motherboards, cabinets, monitors or any other peripheral component as per the customer’s request. For example, Intel is launching its Centrino chip for mobile applications next month. Customers keen on this chip can buy the complete product from us at the same time.” HCL, Acer, PCS, Wipro and BPL are some of Xserve’s customers in India.

“We are expecting to do Rs 80 to Rs 100 crore business from OEMs and system integrators in PC components alone in the next one year,” added Gupta.

For faster delivery of goods, Xserve has invested Rs 5 crore in setting up infrastructure, including two warehouses in Pondicherry and Bangalore for logistics support. Bangalore will also be a repair centre for optical storage products. In addition to this, Xserve is also offering a service package to its customers wherein they can apply for a Return Material Authorisation (RMA) number over the Web for defective pieces. Currently the company has set up six RMA centres in Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Pondicherry and Chennai and it plans to ramp up to 42 RMA centres soon.