It is a grey monsoon day in Mumbai, but inside the Hyatt Regency
Mumbai, there is light and the buzz of business conversations. Alex
Huang, country head—India, System Business Group, Asus Technology Pvt.
Ltd, is already there when I walk in. Taiwanese firm Asus, once best
known for its components, and now one of the big successes in notebooks
and tablets, has been focusing increasingly on its branded business.
Huang is spearheading this effort in India.
“I’ve been in India for two years and two months,” says the 33-year-old. Of medium height and slight build, Huang is dressed formally in a black suit, black and white striped shirt and grey tie. He says he hasn’t found India too difficult. “I spent two years in Taipei doing compulsory military service. That has helped me a lot, especially when I was posted to Eastern Europe. India is also tough. But thanks to my military service experience, I know I can survive here, I can keep my peace, find a solution locally to any problems.”
“The shift to selling branded products is big. But selling white box has helped me a lot. I see things from two points of view—from the vendor’s point of view and from the customer’s point of view. I can tell the brand story right from the motherboard,“ says Huang.
The buzz recently has been about Asus’ tablets, such as the Transformer series, which can function as either a tablet or a full laptop if you plug in the included keyboard (this also increases the battery power of the system). At the same time, the company garnered a lot of attention when Google announced that the Nexus 7 tablet, the first Nexus tablet, was being manufactured by Asus (Nexus is Google’s line of “pure” Android experiences. Phones such as the Samsung Galaxy Nexus are viewed as Android flagships).
The
India launch of the Nexus will be in October, says Huang. Though the
tablets are making news, it is the notebooks that comprise 85% of Asus’
product mix, says Huang, and it is this segment he is focusing on.
Besides the entry-level notebooks, Asus has high-end versions like the
ZENBOOK and the G series gaming notebooks, along with medium-priced
models.Asus has 5% of the five-million market annually for
personal computers, including notebooks, in India, estimates Huang. “I
can’t tell you figures, but you can estimate approximately,” he says.
Asus sold around 250,000 notebooks last year, each of an average value
of Rs. 25,000, giving it an approximate turnover of Rs. 625 crore.
In the two years since Huang has been here, the company has grown in size from 43 employees to 140, and in sales from 20,000 units to 250,000 a year. “All the employees except two are Indian,” he says, adding, “most of them (almost 85%) report directly to me. We have a flat organizational structure. Right now it is centralized because most of the communications to Taipei have to be through me. In business, this is always in conflict. If you centralize too much, you don’t have time for long-range planning. But to trust people to be independent, you need time to build a good structure, we are trying to do that,” he says.
The
waiter arrives with the steak and sandwich, and we pause to dig into
the food. We talk about trends in technology. “There are two
perspectives on technology today,” says Huang. “One view is the people
who feel it will become consolidated. Your tablet, phone, computer will
become one device. Because of that they make the tablets powerful, they
make the phones multifunction, they make the laptops 3G. But if you ask
me, people use different devices for different scenarios, so every
device should have a unique feature.”Huang feels battery life
and camera quality are important for smartphones, while laptops should
be powerful, easy to switch on and include all the latest software in
order to permit easy compatibility across platforms.
As we wait for our coffee, I ask him what is holding Asus back, given the superiority and competitive price points of their notebooks. Huang frowns a little, taking a moment to understand what I mean by “holding back”. “We are a much newer company in the branded notebook market. We started 12 years ago while our competitors have been in the market for more than 20 years. In India, the challenge is distribution. There are no formats like Best Buy and Amazon, which internationally stock our products.”
Huang found distributors resisted stocking Asus because they complained there was little brand awareness of the Asus notebook. So this year Asus has started advertising in a small way in the print medium. It has also started setting up retail stores in tier II, III and IV towns. Besides 60 retail stores, Asus is also focusing on e-commerce, which Huang feels will take off once the logistics of delivery to tier III and IV towns are surmounted.
“To do complicated things you need to be a simple man,” he says of the many business issues and, of course, the challenges of living in a strange land. “The traffic in Mumbai is so terrible. In Taipei, I enjoy driving my BMW. The 20-30 minutes spent driving is time with myself. Here, the traffic is so bad it is torture. I go to sleep in the back seat of my Innova and only wake up when I reach my destination. Because if I am awake, I get angry.”
Besides driving to business meetings, Huang commutes on weekend mornings to High Street Phoenix in mid-town Mumbai to play basketball with a group of Taiwanese friends. “We discuss business, trends and, most important, where we will go to eat on Sunday!” Huang is a foodie, he says; he’s also a great cook and turns out a mean seafood risotto. “Some Sundays we go to the champagne brunch at the Four Seasons Hotel Mumbai, sometimes to ITC Grand Central and also to cafés in Bandra like Salt Water Grill,” he says.
Huang has just got engaged. His fiancée Alice is a product manager for Asus, based in Taipei. “We are still discussing what we will do after we get married,” he confesses. “I like India. I like Delhi for food and clothing, Kerala for a good vacation spot and Mumbai because you feel safe. There are many foreigners here. But India may not be easy for everybody. For me, yes, I’m fine, but maybe not for everybody.”
“I’ve been in India for two years and two months,” says the 33-year-old. Of medium height and slight build, Huang is dressed formally in a black suit, black and white striped shirt and grey tie. He says he hasn’t found India too difficult. “I spent two years in Taipei doing compulsory military service. That has helped me a lot, especially when I was posted to Eastern Europe. India is also tough. But thanks to my military service experience, I know I can survive here, I can keep my peace, find a solution locally to any problems.”
Note this: Asus’ Transformer series tablets double up as laptops when you plug in the included keyboard. Jayachandran/Mint
Much
of Huang’s time in India has been spent criss-crossing the country,
setting up a distribution network for Asus. “I travel three weeks in a
month. Recently, I have been to Delhi, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Agra,
Chennai, Jaipur and Ranchi,” says Huang, who has a master’s degree in
management science, specializing in marketing communication, from Taipei
and an MBA in finance from the Illinois Institute of Technology,
Chicago.We sit down to lunch and order—a steak for Huang and a
chicken harissa sandwich for me. Huang, who began his career in Asus in
2006 selling components in Eastern Europe, speaks now about selling
branded products. “I was in the Netherlands and Norway looking after
white box (personal computers or servers without a registered brand
name) sales for two years.” Shifting to Bulgaria and Romania, he moved
to the sale of notebooks, increasing the Asus market share in Romania
from 2% to 24%.“The shift to selling branded products is big. But selling white box has helped me a lot. I see things from two points of view—from the vendor’s point of view and from the customer’s point of view. I can tell the brand story right from the motherboard,“ says Huang.
The buzz recently has been about Asus’ tablets, such as the Transformer series, which can function as either a tablet or a full laptop if you plug in the included keyboard (this also increases the battery power of the system). At the same time, the company garnered a lot of attention when Google announced that the Nexus 7 tablet, the first Nexus tablet, was being manufactured by Asus (Nexus is Google’s line of “pure” Android experiences. Phones such as the Samsung Galaxy Nexus are viewed as Android flagships).
In the two years since Huang has been here, the company has grown in size from 43 employees to 140, and in sales from 20,000 units to 250,000 a year. “All the employees except two are Indian,” he says, adding, “most of them (almost 85%) report directly to me. We have a flat organizational structure. Right now it is centralized because most of the communications to Taipei have to be through me. In business, this is always in conflict. If you centralize too much, you don’t have time for long-range planning. But to trust people to be independent, you need time to build a good structure, we are trying to do that,” he says.
As we wait for our coffee, I ask him what is holding Asus back, given the superiority and competitive price points of their notebooks. Huang frowns a little, taking a moment to understand what I mean by “holding back”. “We are a much newer company in the branded notebook market. We started 12 years ago while our competitors have been in the market for more than 20 years. In India, the challenge is distribution. There are no formats like Best Buy and Amazon, which internationally stock our products.”
Huang found distributors resisted stocking Asus because they complained there was little brand awareness of the Asus notebook. So this year Asus has started advertising in a small way in the print medium. It has also started setting up retail stores in tier II, III and IV towns. Besides 60 retail stores, Asus is also focusing on e-commerce, which Huang feels will take off once the logistics of delivery to tier III and IV towns are surmounted.
“To do complicated things you need to be a simple man,” he says of the many business issues and, of course, the challenges of living in a strange land. “The traffic in Mumbai is so terrible. In Taipei, I enjoy driving my BMW. The 20-30 minutes spent driving is time with myself. Here, the traffic is so bad it is torture. I go to sleep in the back seat of my Innova and only wake up when I reach my destination. Because if I am awake, I get angry.”
Besides driving to business meetings, Huang commutes on weekend mornings to High Street Phoenix in mid-town Mumbai to play basketball with a group of Taiwanese friends. “We discuss business, trends and, most important, where we will go to eat on Sunday!” Huang is a foodie, he says; he’s also a great cook and turns out a mean seafood risotto. “Some Sundays we go to the champagne brunch at the Four Seasons Hotel Mumbai, sometimes to ITC Grand Central and also to cafés in Bandra like Salt Water Grill,” he says.
Huang has just got engaged. His fiancée Alice is a product manager for Asus, based in Taipei. “We are still discussing what we will do after we get married,” he confesses. “I like India. I like Delhi for food and clothing, Kerala for a good vacation spot and Mumbai because you feel safe. There are many foreigners here. But India may not be easy for everybody. For me, yes, I’m fine, but maybe not for everybody.”
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