As Neelam Dhawan takes over at HP India, she has more to keep up to than her predecessors. With the margin growth significantly higher than the topline, FY 08 has set all new standards for the companys top brass.

The good part is that this is not a result of some seasonal or occasional spurt, but an outcome of consistent contribution from across all segments. While in TSG it was high-end storage and services, in PSG it was mobility, and in IPG it was the consumables business.

HP has the widest product portfolio in the IT industry today. But the behemoth wants to make it big in services too; the EDS acquisition stood testimony to its intentions. However, the catch is that, in India, services contributed 12% of overall domestic revenues, a 2% points increase over FY 07. Taking exports into consideration, competitor IBM really takes away the cake from HP in services. A key role outlined for Dhawan is to drive the services sector through opting for large service opportunities.

The company increased its focus on selling services along with its products through partners. Services revenues grew riding on large deals, specifically in BFSI and government verticals.

Rank-4
l Start-up Year: 1989 l Products & Services: Enterprise servers, software & storage, hardware, imaging and printing, IT services & solutions l Employees: 30,228 l Address: 24, Salarpuria Arena, Hosur Main Road, Adugodi, Bangalore-560030 l Tel: +9- 80-25633555 l Fax: +91-80-2563-3222 l Website: www.hp.com/in
Highlights n Moved manufacturing from Bangalore to new Pantnagar, Uttarkhand PC plant with 4 mn annual capacity. Big consumer, SMB thrust for laptops n Bagged 10 new strategic outsourcing contracts including Andhra Bank, United Bank of India and United India Insurance n Print 2.0 strategy for Web-based printing; shift from number of printers sold to number pages printed Strengths p   Biggest portfolio wide range of pricing from aggressive to premium p High-margin lines in all divisions to support topline growth: laptops, high-end lasers and commercial digital presses, consumables, services Weaknesses q Sheer size and spread, along with autonomy of divisions q Channel issues especially in smaller cities and towns		Neelam Dhawan, MD Ravi Swaminathan, president, Personal Systems Group Ravi Aggarwal, president, Imaging & Printing Group Kapil Jain, VP, HP Services Zarir Batliwala, director, HR NVP Tendulkar, CFO

Even though consumables contribution to the revenue remained the same, it kept the margins flowing for IPG. In fact, most of its margins came from consumables. However, with a number of large companies getting into re-manufactured cartridges, the competition has intensified over the last two years.

Launched in FY 08, Print 2.0 formed the center stage of IPGs strategy. From an overall strategic viewpoint, the company shifted its focus from number of printers to maximizing the number of pages printed. Launch of Snapfish is a case in point and so is the initiative on retail printing services.

Riding on the notebook explosion in the PC market, laptops drove the margins for PSG. Lifestyle computing formed the backbone on the consumer front. During the year, PSG expanded its service network from 120 to 390 cities, while the channel network was stepped up from 480 to 600 cities.

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