Kingston Technology is one such brand that needs no introduction. At some point in our life, we have used a pen-drive or a memory card, or RAM in our PC that was made by Kingston. They are pioneers of producing good quality of storage devices on which you can rely on your valuable data.
We’ve got a chance to interview Mr. Vishal Parkeh, Marketing Director of Kingston Technology and HyperX in India, where he has shared a lot of insights about the company, the values, upcoming products, and what’s next in storage devices market. You can read the full interview below.
Q1. Brief us about yourself & your roles at Kingston Technology and HyperX.
I am the Marketing Director at Kingston Technology and HyperX in India. I am happy to see both these brands in the leading positions. I have led Kingston in India for around a decade and been part of an energetic team to build on the company’s strategic vision. Being at this position, I am responsible for the company’s initiatives and operations along with maintaining the strong brand image.
Q2. What are Kingston’s plans for the Indian market?
Kingston is a lifestyle technology brand that completed its 30th successful year in the industry in October. We have always believed in growing with our channel partners and our strategies for Kingston revolve mainly around ‘Collective Growth’. With the growing diversity in consuming and using data, we plan to strengthen our GTM strategy to give us leverage in terms of better reach and delivery
Not just that, our business plans have the special focus on after-sales service at its core. We empower our channel partners to play a key role in sustaining and expanding the brand’s presence in the country. We are very confident about establishing a stronger foothold and building brand awareness in India.
Q3. How is HyperX brand shaping up in the Indian gaming market?
Though HyperX is the high-performance product division of Kingston, it has become a stand-alone entity for us and so are its offerings. Since the launch of HyperX in 2002, our goal has been to provide high-performance products tailored for the gaming market, so you can say we’ve been in the gaming market for 10 long years. It has grown to be the choice of top-rated gamers, tech enthusiasts, and overclockers worldwide. The reach of HyperX has grown manifold over the past years.
The brand has been designed to understand the dynamic needs of Gen Next. Our gaming product portfolio has been expanding at a super speed. The HyperX headsets are one of the fastest selling gaming headsets and have become one of the preferred choices of consumers for their immersive audio experience at competitive price points. With our recently launched products like Alloy Elite keyboard or the Alloy FPS Pro gaming keyboard or our Pulsefire FPS gaming mouse, we noticed that this brand has a strong pull from the consumers and with a larger acceptance.
Q4. Tell us about the top 3 innovative products by Kingston that is available in the market for customers.
Kingston, being one of the pioneers in DDR4 technology, our memory modules provide the best-in-class quality at an affordable price point.These DDR4 modules deliver higher performance, higher DIMM capacities, improved data integrity and lower power consumption.This helps reduce the TCO for corporates, enterprises and even end users and gamers.
Next to being our DT2000 USB drive. This series under ‘Data Traveller’ is designed to secure data with hardware protection instead of relying on any software, which is hackable.Kingston boasts a wide product range but this particular drive has an alphanumeric keypad that locks the drive with a word or number combination, for easy-to-use PIN protection.
Last being our KC1000 Solid State Drive. With high IOPS and fast speeds of up to 2700 MB/s, this is a worthy storage upgrade for data-hungry software, for processing heavy media files, for PC Enthusiasts, for AAA Gaming titles, etc.
Q5. Is Kingston looking to expand in PC & Mobile accessories market through HyperX brand or directly under Kingston brand name? If yes, what are the areas where we can see the products offering by Kingston?
Our memory and storage solutions are prominent in the PC & Mobile accessories market. We are working on improving the capacities, capabilities, and durability of existing products and there will soon be new models that cater to the specific requirement of multiple customer segments.
Q6. As the hunger of this world for more storage space is increasing, is Kingston looking to offer Cloud-based storage solutions like Google Drive, iCloud, or Dropbox etc. to end users? Something like, let’s say, buy 256 gigs of microSD card or Flash Drive and get 256 gigs Kingston cloud storage free for a year or so?
As you rightly mentioned, there is an explosion in even the number of ways that one can consume data at an individual level, at a corporate level, at an enterprise level, and at an entire government level. As our products cater to each of these levels, we understand the importance of physical storage and the limitations that the current infrastructure presents for cloud computing. Our focus is on physical storage at this moment as there is immense potential for growth. We are working with the ecosystem to help the industries get a better ROI with faster storage and memory solutions.
The response in India has been overwhelming in the last few years.
Q7. How important and big India is “as a market” for Kingston?
In 2015, Kingston had a dominating 64.7% memory market share globally, and we have grown ever since. A more recent example would be the fact that we shipped the second most SSDs in channel worldwide in 2016. We are a channel-friendly lifestyle technology brand that has been ranked as one of the fastest growing brands globally. India is vast, developing at a fast rate and has the potential for growth in a lot of related market segments. The response in India has been overwhelming in the last few years. What’s good for us is the fact that we are able to add value and enrich the customer experience across price points on a regular basis.We are looking forward to growing our reach geographically. Not just that, our business plans have a special focus on after-sales service at its core. Our channel partners will play a key role in sustaining and expanding the brand’s presence in the country. We are very confident about establishing a stronger foothold and building brand awareness in India.
Q8. Anything you’d like to add up in this interview for our readers?
The way we create and process data around us is changing for good. With the development of technology, there is also a rise in viruses and threats to your data, which is actually one of the rising problems in India. It is time to make a few changes and upgrades to make good use of these changes. But, also do not compromise on the security of your data – Your storage is not yours if not secured. We need people to understand the importance of security, one of our key priority. We urge your readers to stay tuned to PC Tablet for our announcements at the upcoming CES show in January.
Thank you for your time, Mr. Vishal Parekh!
