Gigabyte has decided to leverage its recent distribution tie-up with Neoteric to take more B, C and D class cities into its fold this year. Considering the plunging desktop volume in metros, the vendor is looking to firm up its distribution base in emerging markets, and has been working on an enhanced service and supply chain initiative for these locations simultaneously.

With smaller cities and towns have started contributing a larger chunk of revenue, Gigabyte is looking for a 10 percent increase in its non-metro revenue this year. "Our non-metro revenue was close to 20-25 percent last year, and we are targeting at least 30-35 percent revenue from the non-metro locations this year," said Rajan Sharma, GM (Sales and Marketing), MB and VGA BU, Gigabyte India.

The vendor has already got an extensive partner base comprising 275 active resellers across India. To put a better supply chain in place, it will sign up another 30-50 partners in the central and north east India, as well as in Maharashtra excluding Mumbai shortly, informed Sharma.

To strengthen its post sales infrastructure, Gigabyte is sprucing up the level one and level two supports. It is introducing a pickup and delivery service model for the non-metro locations this quarter. For the locations beyond the 20 km range, people can avail the free pick up and delivery facility to the nearest RMA centre. The service calls can be booked through the ASP websites. Gigabyte has a strong service network spread over 88 locations throughout the country through its two ASPs: Smartlink and Accel Frontline.

Gigabyte will equip partners with regular pre- and post-sales updates on the products, and will also roll out good incentive schemes for the partners under its quarterly GCIP programme. The vendor has recently tied up with Jetking Hardware Institute to train the hardware professionals and engineers on technicalities of the Gigabyte products.

Besides announcing more feature-rich products in the coming quarters, the vendor is also expecting an incremental sale from the non-metro locations for its latest mini-ITX GC230D and forthcoming GC330D motherboards. "The components are not easily available on the Atom platform. But we expect the sales will start picking up from July onwards, and we are targeting 10, 000 monthly unit by the end of this year," said Sharma.