“Your Choice” ad campaign is driving Zenith Computer’s sales. Pick anything from Zenith’s 300-showrooms across the country and you’re not charged even an ounce of extra money is its ad blitz. “This is true for installment buyers too,” emphasizes Devita Saraf, Executive Director of Marketing. Zenith, one of the oldest computer peripheral companies, is witnessing change.

India is transforming so quickly that the Mumbai-based company is competing with the likes of Dell, Acer, HP and Sony. Innovation is the only way to progress, Saraf tells us while in her car leaving Intel’s Bangalore office.

Everyone needs one brand to relate to and fall back for all their services, right? She asks. Zenith is evolving itself every time to face tougher and newer competition. It is categorized its market on various parameters and delving deeply into them. It has categorized its market on various parameters and delves deeply into these. The company has positioned itself in government, enterprises and consumers. How does it fare with competition from MNCs? “Every time an MNC moves to India their price fixing is normally calculated in dollar terms, but we being an Indian-company know what to bring to the market and who can afford,” Saraf explains.

Zenith’s customers range from large enterprises such as Microsoft, Bennett & Coleman, Intel and SBI, to average home consumers. Their website claims one of every three PCs in the country is Zenith’s.

“Our motto is ‘a PC for every person’s purpose,’ along with added quality of service and appropriate pricing,” she says. Understanding each sector by considering customer grievance and exposing the artful product is something Zenith highly regards. One product that Zenith created to leverage the student market was the Topper laptop project. With this, the company dictated laptops a student commodity, creating a market disruption, which was until then only used by the corporate executives. This not only widened the market, but also forced Zenith to introduce a different range of laptops while reducing rates.

Last year the company launched seven-laptop models to increase its market share in all the segments. Zenith handles entry-level laptops like Celron to higher-end models like Inferno, catering to all segment users—what it calls as the CEO-to-sales guy strategy.

The company also witnesses the premium level between the MNC and Indian laptop makers narrowing down to 20 percent, given the fact that both the products are developed locally. Saraf explains the necessities to market a laptop- “A laptop is like a mobile phone, closer to the user in every sense, unlike the desktops, so each person is concerned about the kind of model required and also which model he can afford, pertaining to the preference given to the brand value. By bringing in different price ranges and models to all the segment of the industry there is definite growth.”

Zenith is currently a strong contender. Its laptop division constitutes 30 percent of its business, while other desktop servers have stood the test of time. Most desktop and servers are marketed through Zenith’s 800 channel partners, leaving laptop in the hands of Saraf. She is currently not only conducting the laptop business, but is also spending time improving her dealers’ business approach. “We want savvier and experienced dealers,” she says. Lately, the company’s focus has been its retailing units, which it believes will account to 100 percent of its business in a short while.

Zenith may not be Apple, Inc. to introduce creative products, but it is surely doing a unique job to understand customer requirements and the phasing out of products.