Digital India has opened a new window for growth: Rajiv Srivastava

Interview with Managing Director, HP India

HP India, the leader in personal computers and printers in the country, ventured into the service solutions business nine months ago. Rajiv Srivastava, managing director of the technology-products major, reveals the reason for HP’s new endeavour to Arnab Dutta. Edited excerpts:

What is your assessment of the PC and printer market in India?

Personal computer penetration in India remains low at nine per cent compared to 45 per cent in China, 95 per cent in the US and 105 per cent in European countries. Penetration of printers is even lower at less than 5 per cent of households. So there is a lot of space to grow by increasing product availability. Also, the recent digitisation drive that has been initiated by the government is going to help this industry.

The world over, the education sector has been the pioneer in driving growth of our products and as digital content is prioritised in India the same is being replicated here. During the new academic season between June and September, the student community is the biggest contributor to notebook and desktop sales. In India, almost 60 per cent of consumer notebook and desktop sales happens due to educational purposes.

How does HP plan to hold on to its position in a highly competitive market?

To stay relevant in a competitive environment, we have to keep innovating and upgrading in terms of technology, products and offerings. Our aim is to take technology closer to consumers and offer it in a cost-effective way. Apart from focusing on the consumer segment, we are working to bring small and medium enterprises on board. HP has 3,000 partners who solely focus on SMEs. That is a segment with huge potential and the government is inclined to digitally empower them.

For the consumer segment, we aim to increase our retail reach in multi-brand large outlets to 5,000 by 2020 from 2,500 now. Our franchise outlets will triple by that time as well. Currently, we have 10,000 retail partners, which will grow as well.

HP ventured into the service solutions business in 2016. What are you doing exactly?

Social and financial inclusion on digital platforms is a thrust area. To bank on the government’s digital India initiative, we have formed a separate business team this year and have tied up with 20 firms to offer turnkey solutions. Currently, we are working for central government ministries like finance for back-end support to the goods and services tax framework.

Among states, HP is providing solutions to Karnataka, Chhattisgarh, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Rajasthan and Assam in fields ranging from education to legal. Recently, we bagged the contract to digitise the land records of Bihar in which 50 million documents have to be digitised. So, we are operating through 31 service centres in the state where four of our partner firms are working with us. In Maharashtra, HP is digitising court documents, in Punjab we are operating the ‘e-seva kendra’.

How does all this help HP’s topline?

The market for such services is going to cross $1 billion (Rs 6,700 crore) by 2020 and our share will be in line with our market shares in PCs (HP’s share stands at 28.4 per cent) and printers (48 per cent). This is an area from where future growth will come and we are very bullish about it.