Acer eyes 20% growth in India revenues this year

Acer India, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the $20-billion electronics major Acer Computer International Limited, is targeting to achieve a 20 per cent increase in its revenues ($500 million in 2010) from India this calendar, a larger part of which would be driven by its geographical expansion, according to SVS Mani, head (transaction).

The company, Mani said, had covered all metros and major cities in the country quite extensively over the last five years and of late had been focusing on expanding its presence B, C and D-class towns through its ‘outreach programme’.

As part of the outreach programme, Acer has so far opened 750 Acer Galleries (local partner-run touch points in the hinterlands) across the country. It plans to expand the programme to 10 more states, taking the number of galleries to 4,000 by this December, he told mediapersons here on Monday.

 

Stating that the industry was currently deriving 55 per cent sales from metros and the remaining from rural India, Mani said the ratio was expected to change to 60:40 by 2013. “Until a year ago, Acer saw 80 per cent of its sales happening in metros and the rest from B, C and D-class towns. This, we hope to change to 60:40 in the course of the next 18 months,” he said.

Acer, which enjoyed a 16 per cent share of the 300,000-unit-per-quarter domestic notebook market, would see a huge shift in notebook sales, with B, C and D-class towns being the largest contributors, Mani said, adding the company currently had 240 Acer Galleries in Andhra Pradesh of which 80 were in Hyderabad. “We look forward to taking the number to 500 by this June, with all the new touch points being outside of the state capital.”

The company today announced the Acer Gallery Premier League, a loyalty programme aimed at rewarding its channel partners in the state. Attempting to incentivise the channel partners based on the current interest in the Cricket World Cup, the company is integrating the ‘powerplay’ strategy as part of the programme.

“The 240 galleries will be divided into six clusters, with each cluster comprising 20 to 40 galleries. Every product sold by the channel partner will be directly translated into 'runs' -- two runs for a TFT monitor to 10 runs for a projector. The runs scored for various products sold by partners will then qualify for awards, and the products available for redemption will be from 75 runs to 1,000 runs,” he said.