20% PC penetration offers vast opportunity for innovation: HP India MD

India's PC penetration, at up to 20 per cent, presents a huge market opportunity, and the industry must explore innovative strategies to put PCs in every household and workplace, according to Ipsita Dasgupta, Senior Vice President and Managing Director, HP India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

She said India's GDP growth, its status as among the world's youngest population, and its clout as the second-largest GCC hub globally are differentiating it from other markets worldwide.

"The market has been growing at a slower pace than we would like, but really, what makes the market an enormous opportunity is the low PC penetration. India has less than 20 per cent PC penetration," Dasgupta told PTI in an interview.

Noting that PCs play a crucial role in education, skill development, and employment, she said, given these underlying drivers, the opportunity is immense.

"I think the industry needs to think of smart ways to ensure that we help get PCs into every home and every business," she said.

Dasgupta did not share India-specific numbers for HP, but said growth has been "quite robust" in the commercial segment, while the consumer segment, which had slowed down for a bit, is "seeing an uptake".

HP's growth stems from a conscious focus on the most challenging segments of the market, she emphasised. This includes expanding coverage in tier-2 and tier-3 cities, prioritising the MSME sector, and targeting households without PCs by developing relevant consumer use cases.

"We have approached the market by looking at all the harder places, and drive growth. So we have an enormous focus on tier 2/3 cities for coverage. We have a lot of focus on the MSMEs, a lot of focus on households that don't already have PCs, and thinking about use cases for PCs on the consumer side of our business," she said.

Additionally, in the commercial PC business, the company has focused on partnering with Indian enterprises, growing alongside them to ensure technology adoption meaningfully supports their business expansion.

"...(given) the low penetrated market when it comes to PCs and even printers, the idea (is) that there is so much room to play and so much more movement to make in terms of creating Total Addressable Market (TAM), growth and use cases for the PC. Despite being a large, young demographic and a huge digital-first generation, the Gen Zs and Gen-alpha born into digital (world), our PC penetration, per se, is just at 20 per cent," she said.

India, with an average age of 28.5 years, just above sub-saharan Africa and nearly a decade younger than China and the US, and far younger than Europe and Japan, has a unique proposition of a young population that will play a key role in supporting an ageing world's workforce, she noted.

"Largely, the Indian population is going to drive and support an ageing world from a work perspective. So when you recognise that productive devices have to be the PC, and you recognise the need that we have in driving education to move faster, be able to use AI well, we are going to see the growth of PC penetration that I have no doubt about, from a categories perspective," she said.

She said the company is witnessing enormous growth in the MSME sector, along with strong momentum in India Inc., where companies are refreshing their PCs earlier and more frequently.