Kingston has set an aggressive agenda to promote SSD drives, and has launched several customer-facing events and campaigns to promote the new technology. It has also restructured its distribution.

To promote its SSD drives, over the past few months the company has conducted mult



ple events for select communities such as CIOs and power users. The events were centered on technology hubs in cities such as Bengaluru and Hyderabad. The company is also planning to launch schemes to promote SSD upgrades.

“At Kingston we are clear that SSD is the future, and are doing everything possible to accelerate to that future,” said Nidhi Sethi, Sales Director, Flash Business, Kingston India. “We did the same thing five or six years back with USB drives, and though competition is stiff we are the No 1 brand in the USB flash drive market even today.”

An immediate market, according to Sethi, is the upgrade market, and the vendor has already started a campaign for the same. It is offering free demo units to select customers to evaluate the technology. “We have had instant responses to this campaign. Some companies have given partners orders to upgrade their laptops to SSDs. A major airline has also ordered close to 6,000 drives for inflight entertainment,” informed Sethi.

Sethi said that though the current India market size is just a few thousand drives, it’s growing 40 percent month-on-month. “We are expecting NAND flash prices to drop further, and this will further increase the market. We are educating partners on how to market SSDs better.”

Meanwhile, Kingston has restructured and consolidated its distribution, and reduced the number of tier-1 distributors from eight to five. Vishal Video and Sunrise Infosolutions, which were focused on the flash business, are no more direct distributors, while another distributor, Transtek, is limited to the DRAM business. Avnet, Neoteri




partners on how to market SSDs better.”

Meanwhile, Kingston has restructured and consolidated its distribution, and reduced the number of tier-1 distributors from eight to five. Vishal Video and Sunrise Infosolutions, which were focused on the flash business, are no more direct distributors, while another distributor, Transtek, is limited to the DRAM business. Avnet, Neoteric, Sripathi Computers and Compuage will continue to sell DRAM and flash, while HCL Infosolutions will promote only the flash business.