Dell entered India eight years ago with a few global accounts, and stayed nearly invisible outside them. Come 2008, the story is different. In the last three years its grown over 70% annually, touching $800 mn in FY 08 (its fiscal year runs February to January); last year it doubled unit sales.

And it touched 18% market share in x86 servers; it also got 10% of its revenues from government sales and 9% from consumer notebooksboth news areas for Dell India. In Q1 2008 it led the PC vendors in sales to large corporates (over 1,000 employees). Dell remained the #4 player in the x86 systems space (PCs plus servers).

From its earlier global accounts and IT services/BPO focus, Dell has got serious about the enterprise, for laptops, PCs and x86 servers. And its global acquisition of Equal Logic, an iSCSI storage systems company that focuses on mid-markets, will help deepen penetration in the exploding Indian storage market.

At the end of the fiscal Dell announced its channel strategy, shedding its direct religion for its consumer products only (such as XPS and Inspiron laptops). It has added some 100 odd channel partners, and is struggling to get the equation right. Channel partners complain that the rulescant sell entire range (Latitude, Vostro are off limits), cant market or sell to corporate customers, can bill only to individuals, etcrestrict sales. Dell has hired managers from more channel-savvy vendors, which could help it set right the channel story. Its also made a small retail step through Tatas Chroma stores.

Rank-19
l Start-up Year: 2000 l Products & Services: Desktops, laptops, and servers & storage l Employees: 13,000 l Address: Divyashri Greens, Ground Floor, No 12/1, Challaghatta Village, Verthur Hobli, Bangalore South-560071 l Tel: +91-250-68026 l Website: www.dell.com
Highlights n Sriperumbudur, TN plant goes live; 1 mn capacity. Brings down shipping time from three weeks to one week n A tenth of revenues came from government sales, another tenth from consumer, both relatively new areas n New country head in June 2008, after Rajan Anandan left Dell Strengths p  Strong online systems, quick and easy availability of product details, specs and quotes p Wide range of models, colors, options. Made-to-order custom options a major selling point. p Local manufacturing, quicker supplies Weaknesses q Strong online systems, quick and easy availability of product details, specs and quotes q Wide range of models, colors, options. Made-to-order custom options a major selling point. q Local manufacturing, quicker supplies		Sameer Garde, country GM Dr Vivek Mansingh, country manager, Dell India R&D Ganesh Lakshminarayan, VP and MD, Dell International Services Vijay Bharadwaj, VP, HR, Dell International Services

Meanwhile, its global call center in India, Dell International Services, made headlines with Dell reportedly trying to sell it (Dell denies this), even as it saw a change in guard. (Dell India itself saw its India head Rajan Anandan leave the company in June 2008.)

The year ahead will see close battle between Dell and HP, IBM in x86 servers, while on the consumer PC side Dell faces stiff competition from HP and others. On enterprise notebooks, though, its become a force to reckon with.

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