WITH PRODUCT INNOVATION, RIGHT EXECUTION FOCUS AND CUSTOMERCENTRICITY, WE ARE SURE TO CONTINUE OUR GROWTH TRAJECTORY AND EMERGE EVEN STRONGER IN FY1920

Rahul Agarwal, MD & CEO, Lenovo India, talks about his organisation’s performance in 2018-2019

What is your view of the performance so far, of the Indian ICT industry in 2019? Overall, the ICT industry has been witnessing healthy growth in the last few years, driven by growing technology adoption by individuals and enterprises, especially government institutions. Within ICT, PC industry has experienced a marginal decline of ~2% YoY, mainly due to softness in the Consumer Segment. However, Commercial segment of the PC industry still witnessed 4-5% growth YoY.

While the overall market declined marginally in terms of volume, it has demonstrated healthy growth in value terms. This is mainly due to growth in premium product categories, driven by emerging form factors like Ultraslim PC, Gaming etc. Overall, the Premium PC category in Consumer segment grew by over 26% last year, opening up opportunities for PC companies.

What is your view on FY 19 in terms of business and financial performance? Can you share any two key highlights?

Lenovo has had a good FY19 with a 21.3% share in the PC market (i.e., 4.2% gain in the last two years). Further, we have consolidated our leadership in Tablets with 37.5% share! We have seen many highlights in the year, but the two most important highlights are: • We have grown faster than the market and our key competitors, thereby leading to steady market share gain. This is no easy feat in a market that’s flat and extremely competitive. Our share gain is possible through our razor-sharp focus on product innovation and customer centricity • Bagging the Tamil Nadu government deal (ELCOT) to supply 1.56mn laptops to college students. This is the largest deal ever in the history of PC industry globally and it gives us immense pride to partner with the govt. on an important developmental project

What is the way ahead in an environment of declining margins, softer IT spending and tighter outsourcing, and GDPR regime, in the traditional verticalssegments?

As highlighted earlier, while the market is stagnant, certain categories within PC industry (e.g., Premium, Gaming, Ultra Slim etc.) are witnessing rapid growth. Hence, it important for companies to constantly innovate and launch products

that suit the demands of the new-age consumer, to grow at healthy pace.

Additionally, customers will increasingly seek convenience and value. Hence, it is important for companies to differentiate themselves and provide endto-end solutions to customers, as opposed to providing hardware or services alone.

At Lenovo, we are striving to stay ahead of the market by differentiating ourselves and innovating across multiple dimensions. We have recently launched “made to order” feature on Lenovo.com, wherein consumers can custom build their own PC, suiting their requirements. On the retail front, we have ramped up Offline to Online (O2O) initiative, through which consumers can seamlessly shop across our offline and online retail formats. What is your business outlook for FY 20 and what are the key focus areas? We had a very strong first quarter this year – We emerged as a strong #1 in both PC and Tablets, with a record 46.2% share in PC and 45% share in Tablets. With such a solid We emerged as a strong #1 in both PC and Tablets, with a record 46.2% share in PC and 45% share in Tablets. With such a solid start to the year, FY1920 looks promising for Lenovo and as we exit the year, we want to further consolidate our position in the traditional PC & Tablet industry start to the year, FY1920 looks promising for Lenovo and as we exit the year, we want to further consolidate our position in the traditional PC & Tablet industry, while making significant progress in our smart-devices (both smart home and smart office) segment.

On the product side, we will continue to push the envelope on innovation – we have an exciting line-up of PCs and smart devices (smart display, smart clock, smart bulb, etc.) for the year and have already launched our flagship product S940, AI-powered smart PC. Further, we will also focus on expanding our distribution network and enhancing retail experience, through Lenovo Exclusive Stores.

Internally, we have embarked on culture journey, with focus on customer-centricity. We are creating an environment where we keep customer at the center of everything we do and also reward individuals who demonstrate exemplary commitment to customer experience.

To sum it up, with product innovation, right execution focus and customer-centricity, we are sure to continue our growth trajectory and emerge even stronger in FY1920.

According to you, what is the influence of emerging technologies in the next couple of years? How is Lenovo preparing itself for this shift?

Needless to say, technology will play an everincreasing role in our day-to-day lives. In the next couple of years, there will be close to 4 billion connected people! And together, they will access 25million+ apps and generate / consume 50 trillion worth of data.

This is set to fundamentally change the value chain of every industry and offers huge growth opportunities. At Lenovo, we are preparing ourselves for this shift through our focus on ‘Intelligent Transformation’. As part of our ‘Intelligent Transformation’, we are driving 3S strategy i.e., Smart IoT (smart devices), Smart Infrastructure (storage and processing capabilties) and Smart Verticals (end-toend solutions leveraging the power of Big Data generated and processed from Smart IoT and Smart Infrastucture).

The future will provide exciting possibilities for all of us and we are excited to shape the future with our cuttingedge technology portfolio.