Sub-standard products from countries like China are affecting the Indian classroom technology hardware market. Vendors with good quality hardware and software are struggling to get into the right place due to the stiff competition from them in terms of price. The organised market leaders highlight the challenges in front of the Indian classroom technology hardware companies...
Adil Jahangir, GM
Marketing India/South Asia, SMART Technologies
“Users today know that unless and until a solution helps them achieve defined learning outcomes, it is a waste of time, energy and resources to invest on such technologies. Having said that, it is important to note that any industry will have vendors may offer sub-standard products. However, ultimately only those vendors survive who are able to address a specific customer need in the most efficient way without compromising on quality. “
Ramya Chatterjee,
Director (Sales and Marketing), Cybernetyx
“The philosophy of Chinese traders is to dump low-grade unusable products in India in big numbers at brutally low price. There are few channel partners trying to promote sub-standard products considering it as a shortcut of making quick money. However, from long term perspective such products may not work. For price sensitive emerging market like India acceptability of low cost products are very high. However, compromising quality for price may not be prudent decision. It may be sensible to look for a cheapest solution amongst the best available, but it is definitely not wise trying to make-do with the best amongst the cheapest and regret the purchase later. ”
Mohammed Ghouse,
Regional Sales Manager 
(South & Western Asia), Luidia
“Chinese products are available at very low cost but fails in warranty and service as per institutions requirement. Even though local partners promise service, but they are helpless at one stage. Ultimately, it is the institution that suffers loss. It is difficult for an innovator company with quality consciousness to match the prices of sub-standard product manufacturers.”
Rajeev Singh,
Country Head & GM, BenQ India
“There is no doubt about an initial attraction towards the Chinese products are due to its low cost, but often buyers had to pay a hard price considering the after sales performance and service. In case of projectors, there is a wide gap of what product promises on paper and the actual delivery. Some of the common problems are lamp fusing and diming, colour decay, lack of on-site service support resulting in an overall increase in the total cost of ownership of the projector is often seen in Chinese products. Durability is a big concern in Chinese products since most of the products are not able to sustain spikes in electricity and dusty environment of India.”
Lalit Mohan,
Director, iTouch Technologies Pvt Ltd
“Sub Standard products from china are luring the customers owing to their very cheap pricing, but the quality is such that it does not last ever for a couple of years. Also the downtime is higher, and it loses the interest of the user which totally defies the actual purpose of using the technology.”
Tarun Jain,
Country Manager Hitachi
Sub Standard products defeat the purpose of having the product. Service, especially software upgradation, is a key to the product performance, which gets hampered in most of these boards. Handshaking of the content with the Board content is another major issue. In many of these boards, the software does not allow you to open / run multiple applications like using board software, you would not be able to annotate on video file / flash file. After Sales Service is also a major set-back for these Chinese products as they do not look at a long term partner.
