Sunday, March 13 2005 14:29 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Bangalore: Wipro Infotech, the domestic arm of IT major Wipro, is aggressive on its personal computer business to small and medium enterprises across the nation, while evolving a long term strategy to provide total software solutions as they grow their business.

The Bangalore-based Wipro has formed dedicated sales teams for small markets, outside the big cities, to tap sales for PC's and laptops, besides other software solutions, which it says, will also help provide better service for clients.

"It is part of an overall corporate strategy," Wipro Infotech president, Suresh Vaswani said in Bangalore.

Wipro Infotech is the systems integrator and solutions provider for the NYSE-listed Wipro in India, West Asia and Asia Pacific markets that also manufactures PC's, notebooks and servers at its plant in Pondicherry.

Wipro produces about one lakh units from the three-lakh unit capacity Pondicherry unit, while its product sales is growing at a brisk 40 per cent annually as firms in small towns computerise their operations in a fast changing business environment.

Vaswani said that Wipro was focussing on the corporate market as it could offer better service to customers, than in the volume driven retail home segment.

Besides the dedicated sales teams - metro, non-metro and other areas - Wipro is closing deals through its inside tele-sales model "Disha", to bag more business, Wipro vice president, marketing, Mythily Ramesh said.

"Disha is modelled on Dell's sales strategy, where the tele-sales executive in many cases closes the deal over the phone," Mythily Ramesh said, adding, the new model, evolved in-house, has enabled the firm to tap more customers.

The twin strategy of focussing on large customers, selling hundreds of units, and the SME's has helped Wipro increase its domestic business, Vaswani said.

Wipro, Personal Computing Division, general manager Anil K Jain said that while firm's were installing PC's at their offices, many companies were also arming their employees with notebooks to improve productivity.

"With most offices linked to a network, any employee can just plug in his notebook and work. This concept is increasing a lot," Jain said, adding, though the entry level models were "more popular'', light weight and wireless enabled notebooks are also increasingly sought after.