In Conversation with Vishal Parekh, Kingston
While interacting with Vishal Parekh, Marketing Director, Kingston Technology India, he explains how the storage industry has been performing over the years and how Kingston is making big in India.
You have been associated with Kingston for nearly 12 years. How has the overall growth of the Indian storage market been in all these years?
India has been a growth driver for storage. We live in one of the most data consuming countries and that speaks volumes about the potential that this market offers. Rather than storage in general, I’d like to highlight that the adoption of high speed flash storage – Solid State Drives – is on the rise. We have brought this technology into the country for quite some time and has become quite mainstream with more datacenters, enterprises and even small businesses investing in it. Business & end users have seen a phenomenal increase in productivity and ROI. Kingston has been investing in making the newer flash storage technologies even more affordable, now with encryption options.
Kingston is a multinational computer technology corporation. However, its pen drives are its most well-known product. Which other categories are you present in and which is your most promising one?
In fact, Memory Modules or RAM modules is what Kingston founders started business with, and this is still our strongest portfolio. We eventually added flash storage solutions with USB drives, Flash cards and SSDs, followed by HyperX branded products and peripherals that are meant for serious gamers and tech enthusiasts.
We don’t see you very heavy on advertising. What has been your communication strategy so far? What is your idea of storytelling?
Kingston has been in India for a very long time and has always strategically advertised to create awareness in its customer base, be it about a new product or new technology. Our campaigns are more consumer driven and focus on matching the brand’s offerings to the customer needs, like we did for showcasing benefits from both, SSD and DDR4 technologies. We get a mass appeal for our campaigns on digital, social and traditional media. We also try to innovate with experience zones, for customers to try and test our products & make informed choices. Given our top quality products, channel strength, superb service and dynamism in our management, we have been able to develop sales strategies that have done wonders.
Who all do you see as your competitors in the memory and storage market? Do you see yourself in the leadership or challenger position?
Kingston is the world’s largest independent manufacturer of memory products. We prefer competing against our own performance benchmarks that we last set for the industry. Global reports from 2018 mention that Kingston owned 68.53% of Memory market share and 23% of the share in SSD channel market.
What has been the response to your gaming division- HyperX as it is recommendation based? How are you positioning it in India?
HyperX has a niche audience and has exceeded their expectations almost every time. Our products are made to enhance the gaming experience, be it our ultra-comfortable Cloud headsets, the durable and responsive Alloy keyboards and Pulsefire mice and our high-performance SSDs and RAM. Everything is designed, built and fine-tuned with the gamer in mind.
What are your future plans for the Indian market? What do you have to say about your presence in Tier II & III cities and how do you intend to expand it?
Kingston is an established lifestyle technology brand and has pan-India presence. We have a strong network of channel partners that go beyond tier II cities and at regions even Tier III. We plan to continue strengthening our network and bringing the best-in-class products to extend the benefits and advantages to our customers here.
