Over 100% growth in India cheers Dell

As Michael Dell reboots the eponymous company he started in his college dorm days,his business philosophy is very clearmove from products to solutions and services.

As Michael Dell reboots the eponymous company he started in his college dorm days,his business philosophy is very clearmove from products to solutions and services. And India is the key to the overhaul he is driving since he returned to the role of chief executive in 2007. Our growth rate in India is more than 100%,which means Indian business is growing faster than Chinas, says Dell,whose company now counts China as its second-largest market globally. Dell has just begun exports from the Indian facility,which should account for 2% of its global revenues. The demand for services is growing quite fast in India. We have a very strong base and global capability, he justifies.

He is constantly thinking of new ways to serve new customers,as he tries to steer the company through a rough patch. Acquisition of Perot,for instance,has created an $ 8-billion organisation with 42,000 people. It gives us substantial levy in terms of application development,infrastructure managementso its a full range of services and a complete product for our clients. Sometime back we carried out a survey with 10,000 customers across the world and 20% of them said that they want to buy everything (both hardware and software) from one company, he explains.

The new business plan does not stop at people,partnerships,acquisitions and distribution. He also recognises that the centre of the computing industry is shifting to the Internet and smartphones and has shown glimpses of its Mini 5,a hybrid device widely seen to be taking on Apples iPad.

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While he promises to introduce more products on the device side,he is equally gung-ho on the opportunity presented by the enormous data that needs to be served on smartphones. Of the 4 billion mobile-phone owners,only 60 million have smartphones. If you believe,like us,that most will have a smartphone,you can see the enormous amount of data that will be served.

Selling 27% of the worlds servers,he is confident when someone puts up information to be served up on those phones,theres a pretty good chance that its on a Dell server. The focus will be on datacentre,public and private clouds.

By skipping the middleman and selling direct to the customers,he had revolutionsed the personal computing industry in his first innings at Dell.

While he drove Dell to the largest PC manufacturers slot,he became the youngest CEO ever to earn a ranking on the Fortune 500 in 1992.

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The formula of churning out efficient PCs,however,was not enough by the end of the decade and rivals like Hewlett Packard and IBM acquired new companies and capabilities.

The much-talked about $3.9 billion Perot Systems acquisition,for instance,positions it well in ITs hottest markethealthcare. But Dell is not solely targeting the $36 billion the US federal government is poised to spend on IT-related healthcare projects,its eyes are set also on emerging markets like India.