Kingston and HyperX are some of the well-trusted brands in India, when it comes to PC accessories and components. We had a chance to interact with Mr Vishal Parekh, Marketing Director, Kingston Technology India to understand how the company was doing here. We got some great insights on how the firm is faring and its roadmap, products to come and a special note on the Indian gaming industry. Here is what our conversation was all about.
- How is Kingston and HyperX business doing in India? Any numbers you want to share?
India is a key Asian market for both, Kingston and HyperX, in terms of sales, channel partners and community engagements. The market size itself creates immense opportunities for us to showcase products and solutions that help strengthen business operations and productivity. We have focused our energies to strengthen our communication with our stakeholders and to strategically ensure that our value propositions reach the right audience. More essentially from business perspective, we offer the best-in-class after sales service support and with certain internal improvements, we have been able to increase our National TAT (Turn Around Time) for Service to 80% from 60% last year.
From what we see, HyperX has an interesting segment to cater to, which is gaming. There’re growing business opportunities in this segment as the demand for our products has been ever growing. We work with our channel and ecosystem partners to cater to our customers better.
- What can we expect from the brand Kingston/HyperX in 2018 in terms of products and devices?
2018 seems to be ‘The Year of Many Firsts’ for us in terms of products. From the HyperX stable, we launched the HyperX Cloud Alpha, the World’s First Gaming headset with Dual Chamber technology and HyperX Stinger Core, our first headset especially for PlayStation 4. From Kingston’s value proposition, we recently launched our Kingston UV500 family of SSDs, our first storage offering with 3D NAND and Hardware Encryption, and the Kingston A1000 SSD, which is our first entry-level NVMe PCIe SSD with 3D NAND.
The list doesn’t end there as there are quite a few exciting products that the Indian market has its eyes glued to. Very soon, your readers will see and probably experience our first HyperX RGB products in India. Not just that, you can expect more revisions and upgrades to our existing portfolio of products and solutions.
- A gadget you wished Kingston or HyperX had designed?
This is an interesting question. The speed at which we are adding successful product lines, I wouldn’t be surprised if the product I mention gets added to our portfolio. But, from my opinion and quality that HyperX promises, I would have been excited if we had designed the Tesla X car.
- Besides the usual memory and audio products, is Kingston planning to foray into any other gadget segment, maybe a smartphone?
I had a feeling that there would be a similar question. There are no plans at this point to foray into smartphones. However, the answer to the question is still Yes. There are gadget segments that Kingston is adding like the upcoming Nucleum, which sports 7 high quality ports from one USB-C connection or the DataTraveler Bolt Duo, a Dual USB drive for iPhone or iPad.
- What is your take of the Indian gaming scenario? There was a lull period, but it’s gradually picking up, will it finally explode and reach new heights?
To put it bluntly, Indian gaming was more than fragmented till late 2015. This was the time when brands, with interests like ours, worked together to identify and consolidate the gaming communities and help them grow. We worked and invested in creating a steady infrastructure for gamers to participate and improve their skillset. HyperX followed a 3-Tier approach where we
- Empower gamers with quality, durable products
- Help cafés get better at servicing gamers
- Build national professional platforms for gamers to aim for
The gaming industry here is growing at a healthy pace due to the rise in its acceptance from families. What we also see is the increasing drive from gamers to improve their talent with better hardware and better competition. For youngsters, gaming has now become a major source of entertainment due to which there has been a rise in the popularity of the PC gaming, Console gaming and online gaming. It is expected that in coming years, India will emerge as one of the top gaming nations. With our engagements, we aim to develop the casual gamers to professional gaming
