Despite the ongoing supply chain challenges, HP India is ‘very bullish’ about business growth in India driven by continued strong demand for personal computers due to work-from-home, online learning and the emerging creator community.
“In the last two years, there has been a massive surge in demand for our products because products like PCs became essential devices without which you could not work, learn or play,” Ketan Patel, MD, HP India told The Hindu. “It has completely changed the landscape of the industry, especially in India, where the penetration of computing was relatively lower than in a lot of other economies,” he pointed out. He added that despite semiconductor shortages and other challenges in the supply chain over the last two years, the company was able to garner 30% market share in the computing business and 40% market share in the printing segment.
“It’s very difficult for me to say I want to go to this particular percentage market share, but given our leadership position we have to only grow from here and the only way to grow is to make sure that we take care of requirements of each of the customers and I’m very confident that we’ll continue to do well from here,” he added.
Mr. Patel said the future for either work or learning was going to be hybrid — a good blend of online and offline. “This throws up significant opportunities for a brand like us…across large enterprises, small businesses as well as student community… for example, in large enterprises, customers, only in the IT sector in India, we have five million users who will be flex workers starting this year.”
He added that there were still 63 million small and medium businesses that were not yet digitised, and a growing community of gig workers and digital creators. The about 240 million students, currently using smartphones as their main device, were also a target market.