When I read about the plans of the large mesh technology companies, I often wonder about their plans for markets such as India.
I have had the opportunity to be closely associated with Belair Networks, Strix Systems and RoamAD in India.
I have deployed Belair's first mesh network in Mumbai, India, been involved in a Strix Demo at the Presidential palace and very recently involved in the Proof of Concept that RoamAD has deployed in the a large city in the west of the country.
I have had the opportunity to be closely associated with Belair Networks, Strix Systems and RoamAD in India.
I have deployed Belair's first mesh network in Mumbai, India, been involved in a Strix Demo at the Presidential palace and very recently involved in the Proof of Concept that RoamAD has deployed in the a large city in the west of the country.
I will attempt to analyze what their strategies could be, based upon my personal reading of their activities in the country for the last 2 years.
Belair Networks. I have admired Belair for the simplicity of design, and the tremendous technology that goes into their products. Now I have often wondered why such a company would totally ignore the Indian market. Their sole attempt at coming close to the subcontinent has been limited to setting up a sales/support office manned by two people in Singapore. All their attempts at trying to appoint distributors in the country have come to nought. At times, I wonder whether they tried hard enough. I think the primary reason for this is the lack of a strategic vision for this market and Singapore is far more mature as a market than India. Someone who has sold in Singapore will never do that in India. What they dont realize is that the Indian market is a volumes-driven market. Even MNCs like Pepsi and Coke have had to re-write their marketing/sales strategies for this market.
In my opinion, Belair has not addressed the following issues: -
a) Creating brand awarenessIn my opinion, Belair has not addressed the following issues: -
b) Creating a special pricing strategy
c) Creating a supply chain
d) Creating a support infrastructure.
I have often been told by Belair executives that the Belair product line is not comparable with either Cisco or Motorola. What they dont realize is that these two companies have existed in India for the last 10-15 years and have a solid brand reacall. People would rather buy a single or dual radio Cisco/Motorola than go for a product from a Startup that is 20 times more expensive!
I have personally seen that even though Belair offers a 3 year warranty on their products, it is next to impossible using this warranty. I tried in vain to send back a BA200 back to their facility in Canada. The BA200 has still not left the country after 8 months beacuse the rules in India state that a Belair engineer in India has to certify that the product cannot be repaired within the country! Also the shipping constitutes as "re-export" which involves too much paperwork to even attempt. The end result was that the BA200 that we hold has gone to the C&F agent twice and come back with some observation or the other. It is now lying at our offices unusable when the only thing that might have gone wrong with it is the power supply module.
The biggest problem with the Belair products is that there are no field/India serviceable parts. One cannot even change a blown fuse (simply because there is no external interface to do this). One of the ways that they could bring the price down would be to source most of the parts in India or at least assemble the nodes here. I happen to know for a fact that the software that runs inside the Belair Nodes is made by a company out of Bangalore!
I happened to attend a webinar yesterday organised by Belair. One of the questions that I asked and which went unanswered was predictably "What is your strategy for India?"
Though they were quick to answer my next question "How does Belair compare with RoamAD" with "We dont consider RoamAD as a serious threat because they are a 2-radio platfom and we are a 4-radio and upwards platform". I then pointed out that the RoamAD nodes we were using in India were all in fact 4 Dual-band Radio nodes each !!!
I have personally seen that even though Belair offers a 3 year warranty on their products, it is next to impossible using this warranty. I tried in vain to send back a BA200 back to their facility in Canada. The BA200 has still not left the country after 8 months beacuse the rules in India state that a Belair engineer in India has to certify that the product cannot be repaired within the country! Also the shipping constitutes as "re-export" which involves too much paperwork to even attempt. The end result was that the BA200 that we hold has gone to the C&F agent twice and come back with some observation or the other. It is now lying at our offices unusable when the only thing that might have gone wrong with it is the power supply module.
The biggest problem with the Belair products is that there are no field/India serviceable parts. One cannot even change a blown fuse (simply because there is no external interface to do this). One of the ways that they could bring the price down would be to source most of the parts in India or at least assemble the nodes here. I happen to know for a fact that the software that runs inside the Belair Nodes is made by a company out of Bangalore!
I happened to attend a webinar yesterday organised by Belair. One of the questions that I asked and which went unanswered was predictably "What is your strategy for India?"
Though they were quick to answer my next question "How does Belair compare with RoamAD" with "We dont consider RoamAD as a serious threat because they are a 2-radio platfom and we are a 4-radio and upwards platform". I then pointed out that the RoamAD nodes we were using in India were all in fact 4 Dual-band Radio nodes each !!!
Strix Systems
Strix has an interesting approach to the Mesh network. They dont bundle antennas at all! The advantage is that the integrator is free to decide what antennae will best suit the purpose but setting up a Strix Network is a pain. I also heard on the Grapevine that Strix is phasing out the Indoor Mesh product line. Strix's India strategy has been very aggresive. Though not directly present (not even through a representative office), they found a distributor/system integrator called AMI India who invested heavily in Strix equipment. Now AMI has had some amazing wins in Mesh thanks to some strong marketing. There is now a second company called Wireless Tech Pacific (out of Singapore initially) who are distributors for (hold your breath) Tropos, Strix and Motorola! Its anybody's guess which products get pushed more.
RoamAD This is one company that is certainly worth watching very closely. Though they started off as a mesh hardware company, they then changed course midway and are now a pure-play mesh software company. The USP is that the integrator is now free to assemble his own nodes using COTS (Commercially Off-the-shelf) or commodity hardware. This is a sure-win situation for a country like India. Now, one does not have to ship any nodes back and forth across the world for repairs.
I have deployed a RoamAD mesh in India and have to say Im impressed by the technology behind it. I have also been impressed by the fact that RoamAD's CEO and CTO have both made visits to India (at least twice each) to ensure that the pilot networks go off well. Now this is a very positive sign as far as strategy goes. RoamAD has also quickly snapped up Raychem RPG (a very well respected name in telecommunications) as their main distributor/integrator. Network tests on the RoamAD system are very encouraging as the software is built from the ground up keeping Voice and Video applications in mind.
The icing on the cake? RoamAD software along with hardware from ADI/Acure costs about 1/10th of competing vendors. You can't get a better combination than this for a price-sensitive market like India.
RoamAD This is one company that is certainly worth watching very closely. Though they started off as a mesh hardware company, they then changed course midway and are now a pure-play mesh software company. The USP is that the integrator is now free to assemble his own nodes using COTS (Commercially Off-the-shelf) or commodity hardware. This is a sure-win situation for a country like India. Now, one does not have to ship any nodes back and forth across the world for repairs.
I have deployed a RoamAD mesh in India and have to say Im impressed by the technology behind it. I have also been impressed by the fact that RoamAD's CEO and CTO have both made visits to India (at least twice each) to ensure that the pilot networks go off well. Now this is a very positive sign as far as strategy goes. RoamAD has also quickly snapped up Raychem RPG (a very well respected name in telecommunications) as their main distributor/integrator. Network tests on the RoamAD system are very encouraging as the software is built from the ground up keeping Voice and Video applications in mind.
The icing on the cake? RoamAD software along with hardware from ADI/Acure costs about 1/10th of competing vendors. You can't get a better combination than this for a price-sensitive market like India.
I havent remarked upon the other companies like Motorola, Tropos, Skypilot, and Cisco because they have entered the market through the traditional route of appointing channel partners who are more into the business of selling
indvidual boxes rather than providing solutions. It remains to be seen how they fare in the months ahead.
indvidual boxes rather than providing solutions. It remains to be seen how they fare in the months ahead.
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