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Seagate Optimistic About Growth Despite Market Crash

08.12.2008
In the face of recession, where most of the IT companies are looking at ways to increase the demand for their products, Seagate is seeing an upward trend for their products. Talking about the same, Rajesh Khurana, Seagate country manager -- India and SAARC said, "Although the PC market is going down, the hard drive market is pushing up. Though people are not buying new PC's and Laptops, the need to store more and upgrade their storage is definitely there. So although, we may not see much demand from the enterprise section, the end-consumer market is increasing as we speak".

In fact, Seagate is coming out with new ways to penetrate the C and D class cities better. To tap this market better, Seagate announced the introduction of 'at-your-doorstep' pick-up service for its products in the Indian market. This latest customer-care offering from the manufacturer of storage solutions aims to strengthen its support for Seagate customers in remote areas. The service, which is offered through 43 SeaCare Centers across the country, provides speedy pick-up and delivery for in-warranty Seagate and Maxtor products from customers' premises and entails no additional cost to the customer.

"In our regional conference which is held annually, we actually got a response from across the channel community, to increase our infrastructure as far as availability of the services of the product is concerned, to the C and D categories town. For the past 1 year our focus has been to get in the C and D categories in a better way and this is just one of the many initiatives by us", said Khurana.

"This service was initially introduced on a pilot basis and it received tremendous positive feedback from customers living in these smaller towns," said Khurana.

A simple process, customers just call the toll-free SeaCare Centers (1800 425 4535 from BSNL/MTNL lines; 044-42015212 from other lines) and provide details of their Seagate products and addresses. Customers are then given call-IDs, which should be written on the top of the packed products, ready for the pickup service. Replacement drives are delivered in the same way.

Seagate has added around 180 channel partners in the past two years making its channel partner base go to 680. The service is going to be rolled out in full with added features that include online tracking and SMS (Short Message Service) notification. Customers may log in for website tracking and key in the call-ID to get the status of their replacement requests and expected delivery date. A pre-delivery alert is also sent to the customer via SMS.