HP has a Tier III city strategy to cash in on Digital India

HP's Senior Director Ketan Patel talks about shifting focus from metro cities to small towns in hopes of capitalising on the Digital India wave.

Ketan Patel, Personal System Business, HP India, Digital India movement, HP India, HP laptops, HP Elitebook Folio, Workplace transformation, Technology, Technology news

Ketan Patel, Senior Director of Personal Systems Business, told indianexpress.com that the company is focused on the Digital India movement. (Source: Press photo)

HP is shifting its focus from metro cities to small towns hoping to capitalise on the Digital India wave. The US-based technology giant, which now prefers to call itself the world’s largest startup, sees a tremendous growth opportunity in Tier III cities thanks to data connectivity penetration.

Ketan Patel, Senior Director – Personal Systems Business, told indianexpress.com that the company is focused on the Digital India movement. “We are focused on creating vertical-specific solutions. We’re known for devices, but we will create user workflow-based solutions for specific needs such as command and control center for smart cities or kiosks for citizen services.”

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HP is a well-perceived brand in India, says Patel, attributing the company’s success to multiple “proof points”. “The number one proof point is we recently won the brand trust award (2016) voted by consumers. That gives us confidence that customers have the right trust in us. Number two is our performance in the market, and our share position across various segments – home, small medium businesses (SBMs), enterprise, government, public sector.”

Patel insists HP has changed the game when it comes to new products, and that comes from innovation in three major pillars – design, security, and collaboration. “In today’s’ environment, you can’t have PCs which do not have cool designs, and we’ve made a tremendous improvement on that front. The second pillar is making sure that even with whatever looks and feel we’re offering, we are making sure security is very strong both for enterprise as well as personal environment,” he elaborated.

“And finally, collaboration because a lot of our work happens through conference calls via Skype calls, video conferencing etc. We have a product called EliteBook Folio, which can open 180 degrees and act as a speakerphone during a con call. The audio quality by Bang & Olufsen makes sure that the entire room can hear and mic quality is great as well,” he added.

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Patel said HP is focused on this transformation happening across the workforce. “The workplaces are changing – the new offices are very open, and also work styles are more mobile. We read this entire customer behaviour changes and put that into our innovation platform in our products,” he said.

Further, HP focuses on two large segments – home customer and commercial customer. “In the home customer, we’re clearly focused around consumer experiences as well as new form factors. We’re making sure we change retail experience at the ground level thanks to innovations like convertibles, two-in-ones, touch devices etc,” Patel said. On the commercial side, he said, HP was doubling efforts on its ‘office of the future’ concept.

Accepting that laptops becoming thinner and lighter is the way ahead, Patel said the trend was started by HP with its Spectre x360 laptop, which is claimed to provide up to 14 hours of battery life. Further, he agrees the trend will catch up thanks to workplace transformation. “Response to products like Spectre, Elite 360, Elite folio, Elite X2 is a testimony that this is the way to go. You need to make thinner and lighter machines, but without compromising on processing power or battery,” he said. “Our focus is innovation with the customer in mind and profit will be an outcome of that.”

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