As part of our series titled ‘Global Trade Opportunities’ where we feature global brands who are eager to do business in India, Anurag Gaur from electronicsforu.com spoke to Steven Ho, vice president and general manager of EDOM Technology ASEAN and India.
With their headquarters in Taipei, EDOM Technology entered India in 2008 and has been focused on IC channel business ever since. The company claims that their products are not only top notch in the industry, but also offer customers a complete platform solution to help them greatly reduce design threshold and R&D cost. The company has developed platform solutions for more than 10 mainstream products such as notebook, smartphone, feature phone, DSC, PMP and LCD TV, and boast of 80 major brand names such as Akustica, AuthenTec, Broadcom, Cavium, NVIDIA, NXP, ROHM, Silicon Image, Silicon Labs, Spansion, STMicroelectronics and ST-Ericsson.
SEPTEMBER 2012: Q. What are your views about India as a market for your products and services?
A. EDOM started its India operations in April 2008 to tap the business opportunities in this growing country. The company sees India as a potential market for long-term investments. Since the market here is growing at an exponential pace, investing in India makes all the business sense for EDOM.
Q. What products do you feel have more potential to sell in a country like India?
A. EDOM’s India sales team targets automotive, energy meter, consumer and telecom applications as we feel they have more demand in the country. Our annual turnover for 2011 was $809.00 million.
Q. What is your current business strategy with respect to the Indian market?
A. We are in line with some key vendors to provide solutions in the above-mentioned applications.
Q. Do you have presence in India through dedicated EDOM offices or through partners?
A. EDOM India has three sales office, which are located in Bengaluru, Hyderbad and Pune. The company has plans to expand and we will soon be adding our New Delhi office by Q4 2012. Ravikumar D is primarily taking care of our India business and he is based out of our Bengaluru office.
Q. Is the company open to work with partners in India, such as distributors and system integrators?
A. No, we already have few IDH partners in India. So we are not currently looking for partners.
Q. What are the challenges you foresee or have experienced while operating in India?
A. India is a price competitive market, especially when it comes to most of the consumer applications. Most of the local Indian companies import CKD and SKD solutions from China, which makes pure components sale in India a big challenge. Lack of well-established supply chain is another major reason when it comes to setting up local production facility. Sometimes, distributors have to offer lower prices than China, especially when the volume is small, in order to avoid losing business. There have been cases where companies lose business to the traders after spending more than three-six months of design in technical support efforts.
Q. How often do you engage in marketing activities to generate business in India?
A. We have been advertising with EFY for the past two-three years. We also conduct product promotion road show in two-three major cities in India every year.
