Demand for high bandwidth application is increasing

What is different about India as a market?



The Indian structured cabling market offers great growth opportunity. We

will be investing heavily into the Indian market in the coming years. Though

there was a slowdown in the industry, we see a great future ahead. Especially

the telecom sector will offer good growth opportunities. We have got some major

orders from Tech Mahindra, Bangalore and Hyderabad airports, and Logica this

year.

Data center structured cabling market is a major segment for the business.

How do you leverage it?



R&M data center customers have played a major role in our 120% growth in FY

'08. R&M has unique and specific solutions to meet data center requirements of

high bandwidth, security, and modularity. We are pioneers in shielded technology

and we offer high performing Cat 6a (10 Gigabit) shielded solution for data

center. Today, we are present in all sectors. We are very new in the Indian

market but we have done pretty good business in all the different segments

including data center, hospitality, manufacturing, and enterprise.

How do you tackle the price pressure in a price-sensitive market like

India?



Our products are based on the quality conscious approach, not price centric.

End users who consider quality as the main criteria care only for quality

products and not price. All the products we offer are quality-based and not

price-based.

What is your position in India currently, and your company's vision in the

structured cabling market?



R&M is very new to the Indian market. The company's focus on manufacturing

the best quality products, and our product innovation are key factors which

contributed to our Rs 55 crore revenue in FY '08, a 120% growth from last year.

We are not only focusing on enterprise segments but also on the public sector,

telecom, industrial, and residential sector. However, last year, most of our

revenue came from the enterprise sector. Our aim will be to focus on all the

sectors. Our vision is to have 10-11% of the market share in another three

years. With quality products, we also have people with quality thinking, which

is really important for us to ensure satisfactory services to customers. We

strongly believe that R&M's products are the most reliable products in the

market.

What is your go-to-market strategy?



We directly go to end-users and specify products for their requirements, and

exhibit the USPs of our products. We give our mind share to the end users not

only about our products but also about how our services are different from

others and then, at the end of the day, system integrators and partners complete

the job. We prefer this approach, as it keeps us closer to the end users. We

have two distributors at present-TVSICS as national distributor, and Vibgyor

Netconnections as another distributor for the enterprise segment. We have

channel partners in all the cities.

What is the latest trend in structured cabling in terms of technology and

new category of cables?



We have a range of Cat 7-shielded cables with data transmission frequency of

up to 1200 MHz. However, Cat 6a (10 Gigabit) shielded solution is the latest

trend in the structured cabling industry. There is significant growth

(approximately 30%) for Cat 6a shielded deployment for high bandwidth

applications.

Due to fast changing technology, the need and demand for high bandwidth

applications is increasing very fast too. There is a significant growth for the

Cat 6a (10 G Ethernet) solution especially for data centers, NOC, R&D labs, etc.

As Cat 6a standards will mature, there is more likelihood of Cat 6a replacing

the Cat 6 for the LAN to desktop. Due to better NEXT performance

characteristics, shielded Cat 6a is gaining more popularity than unshielded Cat

6a solution. Shielded Cat 7 cables at 1200 MHz are the new upcoming solution in

the cabling industry but it is still in its infancy. R&M offers full range of

products for the shielded and unshielded solution.

Kannan K



kannan@cybermedia.co.in