Kick-started in New Delhi during the last week of October 08, the company launched a massive six city VAR/SI contact program during which it will be demonstrating the technologically superior and three times more reliable (as per company claims) products to them. The company plans to do dedicated training and product education sessions (predominantly) with the networking VARs who will sell its products to the end customers. "In the next two quarter, the company plans to cover all the major tier 1 and 2 cities driving awareness and educating the VAR and SI partners across the country.
In an exclusive talk with Channelworld, Sudarshan Boosupalli, GM, India Operations, Ruckus Wireless revealed that the company has decided in favor of work focused, regional distribution model rather than working with one large national distributor. To this effect, the company has already appointed regional distributors in Northern, Central and Western regions and for the South and broadly across India, the company has appointed Bangalore based High Value as its Value Added Distributor. "Each of these distributors will have 3-4 dedicated people working on Ruckus solutions, who in turn will work with 20-30 VARs in their regions to sell Ruckus products. These distributors have over 30 people on the streets across the country that does the selling for us. We don't have to deploy more resources ourselves," he explained. Currently Ruckus is a four people team, which will grow double over the course of time to increase the sales support for the SI/VAR organizations, who work with Ruckus. "We are aware that we're a small outfit. Despite offering the best technology, the chances of getting overshadowed in the crowded market are higher if we work with the bigger distributors than the smaller ones. That's the reason we are working with focused regional distributors on exclusive basis," said Boosupalli.
To boost sales and create more awareness in the market, Ruckus has also decided to partner with companies like Dell and Microsense, which have great inroads into focused verticals. Dell has great inroads into IT/ITES and Education segments. Using their sales force, we can really corner big numbers and great customers," he said.
Talking about the product roadmap Boosupalli informed that today the company is totally into indoor Wi-Fi products but it will soon be spanning out into the Campus Wi-Fi and outdoor products. "We are launching IP65 grade products which will cover campuses. Next in line will be the dual-radio products, which will be launched in the Dec 08-Jan 09 timeframe. We are seriously looking at the Outdoor space to expand our business," revealed Boosupalli.
The India arm of Ruckus Wireless is targeting a growth of 100 percent year on year. In addition, the company will soon be finalizing a couple of very huge deals by December 2008.