This is part of the company's restructuring exercise to reposition itselffrom being a component manufacturer and distributor to a PC manufacturer inits own right.

For the small business segment, Vintron is planning attractive,competitively priced office machines and is working out a detailed strategyto target institutions and offices through direct marketing initiatives.Simultaneously, the SOHO segment that needs machines with a differentconfiguration and added peripherals, like modems, speakers and printers, isbeing targeted with special promotions, discounts and specially designedproducts at lower price points, like the Elixer range, available between Rs26,500 and Rs 44,995.

Advertising and promotional activity will also receive a boost with thebudget being hiked from Rs 2.25 crore last year to Rs 4 crore this year.Currently its advertising has been limited to dailies and lifestylemagazines. In the next quarter, with the focus also moving to a businessclientele, ads will extend to business magazines also, besides PC magazinesand reseller-oriented magazines, targeting resellers and system integratersfor peripherals.

The company is also restructuring its distribution strategy, bifurcating thedistributor channels of its two main businesses-PCs and peripherals. Forperipherals it now has a two-tier distribution model with around 150distributors and 2,200 resellers, whereas for PCs it has a single tierdistribution network of 350 resellers. Says Manish Agrawal, director,marketing, ``the profile of PC dealers and resellers are quite different, sothe two channels are being used for distributing different products.''This year, Vintron will also be setting up a retail structure. Beginningwith 50 exclusive retail outlets across metros, mini metros and upcountryareas, it is targeting 100 by year-end.

Vintron Informatics has been manufacturing mother keyboards, PCs, UPS andperipherals for the last 12 years and has been distributing PCs under theVintron brand name for the past three years. Till October 1999, it was alsodistributing other brands like Hewlett Packard, Viewsonic, Logitech etc inthe Indian market.

Encouraged by the response to its low-priced PCs-it has managed to get a twoper cent share of the organised market -- it is increasing its productioncapacity from 30,000 units per annum last year to 60,000 units per annumthis year, hoping to achieve a five per cent marketshare over the next threeyears. It has also set up a new manufacturing unit at Daman, in addition toits units in Delhi and Parwanoo in Himachal Pradesh.