Dell to double marketing team three quarters

Bangalore, Sept 22: Bullish on India, Dell aimed at doubling its sales force in India every three quarters and building leadership in every segment.

Talking to newspersons here, Dell India Vice-President and General Manager Rajan Anandan said that with a 63 per cent revenue growth in quarter two, the company enjoyed a total turnover of Rs 1,800 crore and once its production plant in Chennai became operational by the first half of 2007, the company would aim big to take the top slot. The Chennai unit would initially have a capacity of 4,00,000 machines, most of them desk tops. However, production could be scaled up to meet the growing demand, he added.

He did not rule out the possibility of reduction in the price of Dell computers after production in the Chennai plant commenced.

Currently, pitching its sale on institutional and large corporate buyers, Dell had a total workforce of over 12,000 in India. With a huge chunk of employees working in call centres, Dell had a sizeable presence in research and development, which contributed much of the software for its ninth generation PowerEdge server release in June this year.

Mr Anandan said Dell gained a share of three per cent in the second quarter, with the unit sale going up by 82 per cent.

Enterprise products contributed 20 per cent of the total revenue.

He said Dell posted a faster year-on-year revenue growth among top external disk storage systems vendor in the third quarter of 2005. From a mere 30 per cent in 2003, sale of branded computers in India had increased to 70 per cent, he added.

UNI