In a recent interaction with CRN India, Amit Luthra, Managing Director – ISG, Lenovo India, shares insights into the company’s ongoing growth, particularly in the post-COVID landscape. Luthra highlights how the pandemic accelerates IT transformation, driving demand for better infrastructure. A key focus is on the rapidly growing AI market, which is reshaping the infrastructure landscape and contributing to significant growth.
How has the business grown in the past couple of years, particularly post-COVID, in India?
If you ask me, I think the pandemic was also an opportunity because most organisations, especially on the infrastructure side, suddenly felt the need for better technologies. In fact, there are jokes in the IT community about how the pandemic kickstarted or pushed IT transformation. In that context, if you look at the infrastructure business during and post-pandemic, it has been on the rise.
Markets have been fairly consistent, growing at a steady pace until about last year, following a similar trajectory. But what really changed the entire landscape is AI. Today, if you look at the markets, they might show 50-60% growth, and that’s driven by the infrastructure required for AI, which has become such a significant market, previously dominated by the compute market.
I think we’re heading into interesting times. The markets are about to experience a rare moment in history. AI is definitely that rare moment where we are going to see many things change, especially in the infrastructure business.
How has your partner ecosystem evolved over the past few years, and what major changes have you observed?
We believe that the stronger the alignment we have with technology, the more our technology resonates with customers. As a result, our partners are more likely to return and engage with us.
We’ve seen our active partner engagement grow twofold over the last three years. Every year, the number of channel partners transacting with us has doubled. They’re not just coming back; they’re also signing new partnerships, contracts, or reseller agreements with us because they see us aligning well with customers’ transformation journeys.
What gives me more confidence is knowing that our business isn’t reliant on just one account but many. One key metric we track is how many business partners we’re transacting with, and I can proudly say we’ve experienced high double-digit growth, year on year, for the past three years.
Do you have any particular incentive programs or knowledge sharing programs for the partners?
Yes, definitely. What we believe is that we’re in this together. We don’t just go back to channel partners and say, “We’ve concluded the deal, now you handle the transaction.” It’s not like that. It’s more of a co-pilot arrangement. We’re responsible for their business, and they help us in this process. It’s a kind of co-pilot engagement.
We also have incentive programs in place, based on the solution and the market’s needs. Additionally, we spend a lot of time on enablement because they are our extended sales force, our extended eyes and ears in the market.
So, can you quantify what percentage of your business is channel focused?
Around 80% of our business in India happens through channels.
Can you discuss Lenovo’s latest data centre solutions, including servers, storage, and networking? How are these solutions differentiated from competitors, and what are the key value propositions for customers?
I would say that differentiation comes from reliability. This is our ninth year in operation, and we are rated the best in reliability. Differentiation also comes from benchmarking. If you take any SAP benchmark, we have the highest number of these benchmarks available. The difference lies in our ability to run the top supercomputers. If you look back, we are the vendor that operates the highest number of supercomputers in the world.
That’s where our differentiation comes from; we present material differences compared to our competitors in the industry. Regarding our portfolio, as I mentioned, we have a complete range for edge computing, including edge PCs, edge servers, edge GPU servers, and edge cloud servers. We offer a full gamut of compute platforms, such as tower servers, regular rack servers, AI servers, and dense servers. Additionally, we have a very strong portfolio in storage and hyper-convergence. We work closely with ecosystem vendors on the network side, which enables us to deliver full-stack capabilities to customers through our channel partners.
What do you see as the main challenges for expanding data centres in India, given the projected data structure demand of around $10 billion by 2027 and the fact that 20% of global data flow is through India, but the country currently has only 3% data centre capacity?
I don’t think it is a challenge; I believe it’s more about being a little late. Everyone is gearing up for it. In just a year or so, India will be the most lucrative destination.
Can you quantify what is the untapped market in the data centre industry in India?
The untapped market for data centres in India aligns closely with the untapped market for PCs and mobile devices. As soon as every Indian has a PC or mobile phone in their pocket, the demand for data centres will increase exponentially. This is because applications will require infrastructure to operate, and that infrastructure must be supported by data centres—whether public, hybrid, colocation, or private. Therefore, I believe that as device penetration increases, the demand for data centres will grow significantly.
What is the current demand for AI-powered PCs in the market?
The excitement is very high because the refresh cycle is around the corner. Whether it is a necessity, or is it still a luxury at this point in time depends on what you want to do.
On the enterprise side, it might become a necessity. For consumer gaming, it could also be desirable; however, from a necessity standpoint, it really depends on the use case.
We have a peculiar problem where PC penetration is quite low compared to the population in emerging markets, like China and Brazil. If we reach around 40% PC penetration, I think things will be different. AI PCs will become a necessity in enterprises because we need to bring the data closer to the AI.
What will be your focus for the next 12 months? Are there any new launches or acquisitions planned?
There will definitely be launches. There are newer platforms lined up, and we are very excited. In the next six to nine months, our focus will be to get the first server shipped out of our Puducherry facility, while simultaneously aiming to grow twice the premium in the market.
