Introduction:

With businesses facing acute power shortages, the need for power conditioning has become a dire need for them. Taking into account business continuity; ready availability and maintaining uptime, power backup becomes an essential fundamental of the businesses. Growth penetration into tier-II and tier-III cities, along with the rise of IT/ITES sector, has led to growing sophistication and increased dependence on machines and automation. This development has forced industries like healthcare, pharmaceuticals, hospitality and telecom to depend on an assured supply of electricity to function unhindered. Vertical-wise, SMBs and SOHOs have played a major role to take this concept to new heights, and their dependence still remains intact. With increased technology adoption among the players in this sectors, their needs for power back up have also increased. Besides, the rapid deployment of third-generation mobile phone systems like UMTS creates new opportunities for UPSs in base stations. The increasing computerization of the banking services has also increased the business opportunity for back-up power supply.

However, there's need to educate the overall market, irrespective of verticals, about the UPS' applications in various fields. This is not only key for IT industry but other industries as well, feel many vendors.

Players:

Company	Latest Product	Price	Spokesperson	Warranty	Market Share
APC	Smart-UPS: 750VA - 5kVA	-----------------	Gaurav Burman, Director, Transaction Business, APC India	Two Years	------------------
Delta	R Series	Rs. 10,999 - Rs. 31,999	Deepak Sharma Director (Sales)-UPS, India & SAARC	Two Years	--------------------
Emerson	Liebert NXL   250-400kVA	-----------------	Ankesh Kumar, Senior Manager, Channel Products (India)	------------------	-------------------
Numeric	HP E Series	-----------------	N Kumaran, Associate Vice President, Numeric Power Systems	-------------------	------------------
Socomec	Green Power UPS	-----------------	Norbert Jacobsen, MD, Socomec UPS India	-----------------	Overall 12 percent

Go-to-market Strategy:

APC:

Offering an insight on APC's market strategy Burman said, "Our major thrust will be on getting closer to our customers. Besides, we will also try to understand customers' pain areas, and will sell solutions not products. Adding more to it, we are also offer right size products to our customers. Our main focus will lie on benefits of energy management and high quality power supply. On the channel front, we will work closely with partners. We will have more channel-friendly activities, such as channel training programmes, etc. We want our partners to be trusted advisors of our customers.

Delta:

On Delta's strategy, Sharma said, "Delta intends to reach our customers through all possible mediums. We will reach them directly through our regional network as well as through our distribution network. This year we have a two pronged strategy for our channel business, which is to expand our reach across the country as well as consolidate our current channel business. We would like to focus more on the SME, corporate industrial and government segments for our UPS business. Delta focuses on the enterprise segment in tier I cities, and for SME & SOHO segment Delta focuses on tier I & II cities.

Emerson:

Elaborating Emerson's go-to-market strategy, Kumar said, "To have an increased adoption across all the targeted verticals, we have come up with 10 pointers campaign of late, where we educate customers on the benefits of investing on online UPS. Plus there are several promotional schemes and benefits for the partners to engage them into online UPS sales. We are also looking to work with the individual SIs to scale up these efforts further. Going by the last few year trends, our main focus is to target the small group of entrepreneurs as well as a number of small and medium enterprises. Vertical wise we would concentrate more on to the government, education, healthcare and telecom. We perceive a good amount of growth coming from the smaller cities too.

What Strategists Say:

	In case of individuals, the growth in the UPS category will come as a result of increased awareness on the need for proper back-up solutions that provide high quality, well regulated power. SMBs and SOHOs have been for quite some time the largest drivers of growth in the industry. This trend continues. The growth of SMBs and SOHO segment has led to their business requirements evolving and thus resulting in need for IT and power conditioning solutions. Customers often fall prey to cheap electronics in the category the first time and end up making an informed purchase the second time as they realize the importance of proper power backup. Times are changing and customer demands are going up. They are increasingly become brand conscious and their purchase is driven by promise of quality and reliability and strong after sales service network. - Gaurav Burman
	There is tremendous untapped potential in various verticals. With the PC penetration increased in tier-II and III cities, the market demand for UPS increased. Increased utilization of laptops is another concern for the UPS industry. Further, the adoption of datacenter automation solutions is becoming increasingly critical for IT departments which also help in booming the requirement for power solutions. The rapid deployment of third-generation mobile phone systems like UMTS creates new opportunities for UPSs in base stations. The increasing computerization of the banking services has also increased the business opportunity for back-up power supply. Customers, across verticals, are seeing value in the UPS systems. Be it for datacenters, the healthcare or the hospitality industry, UPS Systems are a key requirement. The increased use and the erratic power condition also increased the demand for back-up power solutions. -  Deepak Sharma
	The offline and line interactive UPS market is gradually shrinking in the organized sectors, while the online UPS market has been growing progressively across all the key business verticals lately. The products have seen an increased adoption among the businesses for its power solving capabilities which helped the market grow at a moderate 20-25 percent growth rate at present. A considerable growth is coming from the segments where a lot of IT expansions are taking place and the criticality of applications is high. Besides that, a lot of buying is happening from the industrial segments also, where it has been largely used for supporting non IT applications.    - Ankesh Kumar

Channel Partners' Comments:

Jalandhar-based Rajiv Khanna, Proprietor, Computer Touch, said, "Over the last years, in upcountry markets like Jalandhar and other cities dealers have started selling both offline and online solutions. We have started selling solutions to new segments like mission critical LAN/WAN deployed corporate, government, large industries and telecom sectors. With falling prices of offline and online solutions, the margins and quality of the UPS have been drastically going poor. In entire Jalandhar, we are facing acute service-related issues of all the branded UPS companies."

Ludhiana-based Gaurav Sharma, Director, Royal Infovison, said, "The transition from transformer technology to transformer-less technology is evident throughout different verticals. The market has seen increase in the online UPS demand for mission critical applications and a shift of interest from distributed UPS (micro range) towards centralized UPS. The online UPS starts from 1KVA category onwards, and we are seeing online penetrate the 1-2kVA category. We are betting big on the mushrooming of large format retails in B&C class cities."

Gorakhpur-based, Mohd Yusuf, Executive, Microdot Computers, said, "The increasing power failure and a data loss have made SMB/SME more aware of the importance of installing online UPS. In the local market, the demand for online UPS is around 2-3 percent, while offline solutions dominate the market."

What ChannelTimes Says:

Increased dependence on uninterrupted power and growing industrialization in B and C class cities, the demand for UPS solutions will see upward trend in the coming days. However, with buyers going for brands and product reliability, every vendor has chance to eat its own pie of profit. The growth spanning across verticals has not only created competition among vendors, it has opened new doors of business opportunities to the channel partners.