Exclusive Interview – Mr. John Dong, Director, Tenda India
Do you think that the networking market in India is flourishing with the impact of affordability of the internet?
If you compare today’s networking market with the one from a decade ago, you will find that back then the price of the Internet was very high compared to the speed an individual used to derive from the connection. Having an Internet connection was a luxurious affair back then. Fast forward it to the present day, the Internet has become a necessity for people. Where there is tough competition between the ISPs and the mobile data providers (Jio, Airtel, etc) who are offering a vast amount of data at a cheaper rate, it has made the ISP offer better rates to the consumer. Overall, this fight between Internet providers has benefited the consumers in a positive way. We, as WLAN Provider understand what the consumer’s needs are and we make sure to provide them with the best routersso that they can utilize their Internet capacity to the full potential and that too at an affordable rate.
What all investments are you planning for the company to boost your presence in India?
India is a growing market, the rate of adaptation to technology and change in people’s lifestyle is the highest I have seen compared to any other country. We are keen to strengthen our presence in India. As Tenda already has a base sales structure, we are working on building a stronger human infrastructure of professionals from the industry to ensure growth at a rapid pace. We are also planning to invest in building the brand presence in the market and the first step for same has already been initiated in form of our newly hired Marketing team that will be spearheading Tenda’s marketing activity in India.
Overall, you can say that you will be seeing Tenda a lot in the near future and it will all be for better networking.
When it comes to affordability, what are your efforts to keep your products under affordable price range?
We can’t assert it but Tenda has always believed in offering its consumers with the best products at an affordable rate, and this motive of ours has always served up to be one of the key pointers when we think of introducing a new product to our consumers in India. We also make sure to provide a reasonable margin to our partners as well.We strongly believe this is one major reason behind the rapid growth of Tenda as a brand in India.
What are the challenges you face currently in this market? What are your strategies to overcome such challenges?
Even though the technology is advanced and the people are upgrading their smart gadgets, a foremost challenge that we witness is the acceptance of people on investing money on the router.
As far as margin is considered, yes,it is an important part but Tenda’s strength of having its very own manufacturing unit with enough resources has helped us to take the lead in the router segment. The brands that continually kill their competition are those who understand that strategic brand goes much deeper than traditional marketing techniques. Consumer’s buying habits, behaviour and thinking towards products keeps on evolving and our strategy has to be aligned with the market and the consumers needs at the same time remain intact with our prime factors such as quality and affordability.
At present, we are operating pretty good and planning to invest more on the marketing front to maintain and build up a notable and renowned identity of the brand in India.
What are your channel engagement policies? How do you provide better support to your partners?
By joining hands with us, the channel partners are able to provide the consumers with better technological products. This way they can sell better products to the consumer giving them the benefits of advanced technology and at the same time an equally important thing is that they get to join hands with aglobal brand that will provide them with technically competent products to service the consumer. Hence, a win-win situation for everyone.
For channel engagement policies, we at Tenda prefer to closely cooperate with those determined channel partners who are also ready to put their whole hearted efforts in promoting and selling Tenda products in their respective regions. We make sure that Tenda’s partners get an easy sell whenever they are pitching our product to the consumer.Our continuous investment in branding has resulted in an increase of consumers’ knowledge about Wi-Fi, its uses and how our products can help them in their day to day life. This invariably has led to its demand. Not to forget, we make sure that our partners are promoted prominently across the channel magazines and our official Facebook page, which builds upthe consumers trust on our partners and strengthens our relation with them. To provide lucrative benefits, schemes and offers are introduced from time to time according to market requirement and status.
How do you see the importance of excellent service support to retain consumers? How do you keep your service support better than others?
Our primary goal is to make sure that the products sold by Tenda are of the best quality with no issues at all, but then again, as it is an electrical device problem ought to arise and so we make sure that our consumers get an easy access to our services and the RMA centers without much hassle. We also have our technical support team to help our consumers in case the problem can be solved digitally.
We understand that “excellent service” is essential and one of the most important aspects to doing successful business in any market. And so we are making sure to expand and have more service centers in multiple areas in order to provide on time after sale service.