Need the lady who can even sell memory to you!!

Flash memory maker SanDisk India’s country manager Manisha Sood belongs to that rare breed of woman achievers who have successfully broken through the glass barrier. In the highly competitive and male dominated consumer technology space, Sood has risen to the top by dint of her determination and hard work. She has been a technology leader for over 20 years now and helmed the operations at Canon India, before joining SanDisk in 2006. At the time she left the Japanese camera maker, it was the No.1 digital camera brand in India. That same momentum she has now brought to bear on SanDisk, which today sells two million flash memory chips per day, or roughly 750 million annually. “That makes us one of the most deeply penetrated brands in the world. Anywhere there’s a mobile being sold, or a digital camera or a laptop, SanDisk will be present there,” says Sood, who was born and brought up in Mumbai.

Her new mission statement is to make SanDisk an iconic global brand as far as flash memory is concerned. From its humble start SanDisk has grown to operate in more than 200 countries, with over 2.5 lakh retailers stocking its products. Last fiscal it clocked roughly $5.8 billion in revenue. In India it retails through 20,000 outlets. The company, born in 1988, is currently led by Sanjay Mehrotra, who was among its original co-founders.

The first major invention by the company, Sood informs, was CF (compact flash) cards, which are used as a memory storage card for digital cameras. Ever since the company has gone for several other tie ups with leading tech companies, and has had a hand in several inventions and co-inventions. “Like the SD (secure digital) card, used in cameras today, is a co-invention of SanDisk with Canon. Then the Micro SD card was also invented by us for Motorola phones and now it has become an industry standard. We have all the formats of memory cards, and even the pen-drive was invented by us,” says Sood. No wonder SanDisk has more than 2800 patents, and gets almost 8-10% of its revenue from royalty through these patents. R&D is another big focus -- last year the company spent $550 million. It also has an R&D centre in Bangalore with a 250 staff strength, and is part of SanDisk’s global R&D network, which also spans other places like Israel, Japan, and Korea.

For SanDisk India is a priority market, what with its 200 million annual mobile sales and a vast youth population. “Today, the phone has become the central device for everything – entertainment, data and information – and almost 90% of mobiles have a SD card slot, and hence a big opportunity for us,” Sood says. Her company currently makes three lines of products – camera cards, USBs or pen drives, and mobile cards. To popularise usage, the company has established strong channel partnerships, and provides its dealers with training on SanDisk products. It also rewards high performing retailers through its loyalty programs.

For mobiles, SanDisk offers memory cards from 2GB onwards right up to 64 GB. There are also base level and ultra-speed cards meant for smartphones. According to Sood, usage of high-end memory card is more in the tier 2 and tier 3 towns. “In the metros people have access to multiple digital devices – like laptop, radio, Internet, TV, camera – while for people in tier II & III towns, mobile is the central device, which everyone can afford.” For the camera segment, the company has three levels of products on offer. There’s the basic card, meant for point-and-shoot camera, the ultra-cards meant for HD video cameras with 30MB per second speed, and an extreme card, which comes with 100 MB per second, for functional, sports photography, and burst mode, and can work in temperatures ranging from -20 degree to +85 degree.
 
On the marketing front, SanDisk has been doing a lot of push and pull activities. The company ensures that its channel partners are constantly engaged with the product and there are loyalty programs to incentivise customers and distributors. “We have a team of 23 people who go out in the market to train the distributors and sales staff. In the top 14 cities of the country, we ensure the retailers are well merchandised and have all the training material, as he is the link between the brand and the consumer,” informs Sood. In terms of working on the pull factor in the market, SanDisk, in a global first, launched a TVC in December last year, and did a massive Diwali promotion for consumer engagement.

Retail contributes 38% of SanDisk’s overall revenue while OEM sales contribute 62%. Sood is part of the retail sales, and her mandate is to grow this pie rapidly. Overall, Asia contributes 21% to SanDisk’s top line, and India and China are the two leading markets for SanDisk in Asia. As people in these regions move to buy their 2nd or 3rd phones, the demand for memory is bound to grow by leaps and bounds in smaller cities too. “Whether taking a picture, making a video, everything is memory hungry, and you can’t have a hard disk in it. So every portable digital device in the consumer space, be it a camera, laptop, mobile, projectors, smart TVs, are memory hungry and can’t do without flash memory, which is slowly replacing traditional media like floppy drives and CDs,” says Sood. Looking at consumers’ fascination for digital products, SanDisk looks set to become a force to reckon with.

Onkar Pandey, 7 August 2012