SanDisk: Safeguarding Quintessential Products under their Wings with Vertical Integration Strategy Date:   Wednesday , October 22, 2014 Most organizations typically take the shortcut of horizontal integration, which often leads the production to go awry due to the lack of control. But, SanDisk (NASDAQ: SNDK) assures customers as a reliable partner with their end-to-end vertical integration, whereby the company takes complete responsibility throughout the product\'s lifecycle from designing, manufacturing, assembling, firmware installation to massive distribution. This vertical integration business model is the exhibit A for SanDisk\'s willingness to go to the world\'s end to bestow customers with quintessential products that are safeguarded under their wings. It also enables the company to drive well-optimized performance, endurance and cost-efficiency while leveraging SanDisk\'s intellectual property to deliver the highest performing, well-optimized and fine-tuned flash storage solution to customers. If Not Now. Then When? The Silicon Valley headquartered company that celebrated its silver jubilee last year was founded by the non-volatile memory technology experts Dr. Eli Harari, Jack Yuan - former SVP and Sanjay Mehrotra. Dr. Harari, former CEO & the visionary brought alive the flash memory technology by founding the EEPROM that ascertained the practicality of semiconductor-based data storage. SanDisk was born with the revolutionizing idea of transforming flash technology into commercial products & solutions for emerging consumer electronics world. It paved the way to various inventions akin to digital cameras and music players. In 2011, Dr. Harari handed over the reins to Sanjay Mehrotra, Co-Founder, the former President & COO of SanDisk. Having over 70 patents, Sanjay further brought forth new growth strategies for various emerging markets and expanded SanDisk’s focus to include SSD solutions. Today, SanDisk is an indomitable force that incessantly proffers numerous ground-breaking products that are ideal to the four mega markets they cater namely mobile & connected devices, client computing, enterprise & hyper scale data centers and consumer market. Having almost 5000 patents and setting their footprint across 55 countries further fortified the company. With ‘If not now, then when?’ attitude, SanDisk leverage such strengths to keep itself way ahead of the market. This escalated the company that was built from scratch to attain $6.13 billion dollars revenue in the four last reported quarters and survive massive recessions. \"As a company that invented flash technology and many of the subsequent products, we take pride in the fact that we are always at the forefront in bringing newer designs and technologies to the market place,\" says Rajesh Gupta, Country Manager, SanDisk India. Strengthening the Patent Portfolio The company is confident that India’s partaking in sales, operations, R&D and administration is pivotal to SanDisk. Hence, SanDisk has handpicked a proficient marketing team to cover the huge consumer market of India. In SanDisk’ Bangalore development centre, almost 450 engineers are constantly innovating for the betterment of removable storage devices and also majorly contributing to software development. SanDisk’s patent portfolio is gaining more and more strength, because every individual in SanDisk is persistently motivated to put forward newer proposals and plans, which are converted into solutions and products. The company has earned a reputation as the most respected community in Bangalore, due to the significant amount of importance they lay in establishing the corporate social responsibility. Seizing the Opportunity As the drastically rising mobile & smart phone market in India holds promising future for flash products, SanDisk strives to increase their reach across mobile phone distribution & retail networks to make their products and technologies more ubiquitous. SanDisk has pioneered the faster and lighter USB flash drives that would consume less power precisely for the fastest growing Tablet market and keeps building memory cards to cover the entire spectrum of digital cameras. The company is also keen on building the most robust Solid State Drive (SSD), the newest technology made of flash which is very fast yet consumes low energy as opposed to traditional hard disks that tends to crush a lot. Astute Internal Solutions One of SanDisk’s most ambitious plans is their geo-expansion program, through which the company endeavors to establish a superior retail sales & marketing training network in 23 cities outside the top-tier cities. To maximize SanDisk’s footprint, the company is investing in tie-ups with distributors and engaging with retailers in diverse categories in those areas. With SanDisk’s training programs, the retailers are being edified about all the available products and its features, which aid them to ultimately pitch the customers. \"We are investing in well-organized channels to ensure the availability of all kinds of SanDisk’s products in every nook and corner of India. With our merchandising & marketing program, many merchandising materials have been converted in to local languages including Hindi and Tamil; to enable the consumers and retailers to understand the messages and communicate further,\" says Rajesh Gupta, country manager, SanDisk India. The company that keeps expanding the boundaries of storage with newer products is keen on creating awareness about their new product releases.