Ghassan Azzi is the senior sales manager, Africa for Western Digital Corporation, a global data infrastructure company. In this interview with Jumoke Akiyode-Lawanson, he talks about the company’s plans to establish and grow business across key markets in Africa. Excerpts.
Why is it important for Western Digital to be in the Nigerian market at this time?
The Western Digital Corporation has seen a lot of potential coming from not only Africa but Nigeria as well. Nigeria has a very dynamic young generation, were looking at about between 0 and 25 represent 65 percent of the population. This set of individuals are all connected, through either mobile phones or other devices. Asides this young generation, now if you would look at the educated people that have graduated, there are a lot of entrepreneurs coming up unlike before. This is something we think that is actually going to grow and support our product, we want to use our technology to enable them to help them grow their business.
What does Western Digital do to ensure data is secure?
Well, with the high technology that we use in our products, it depends on what the customer requires from our product. Most of our products have security you can encrypt. So whether it is a small device or a big device, a flash or a hard drive, it depends on the consumer to enable and encrypt a password to protect the data that is in the device. But our hard drives and external drives all have some form of security you can password and even some of our flash drives as well have that option. At the end of the day it is up to the customer to decide. We offer that and the customer has to approve.
Is there anything you’re doing to get ahead of the competition?
We are ahead of the competition because we are the only company that is available in Nigeria and has a presence with distributors officially. Our products are officially distributed by our distributors whether it is a Western Digital or SanDisk product. Other brands are not always readily available as they are being brought from other countries but not officially distributed in Nigeria. So we are already ahead of that aspect with our established distribution structure. Asides establishing our network, we are consistently carrying on our brand marketing. Whilst building our brand, we are doing all the education needed and developing the channel which shows we are much ready.
What is the business strategy for Nigeria and how do you intend to meaningfully impact the economy?
As mentioned earlier, we started by being a special distributor. We have two core distributors that are taking care of our products and distributing our core revenue. We also have local people on the ground and expanding to other cities in the North and South. We are going to expand from Lagos and spread all over the market. Then later on when things develop further we will put more people on the ground to help us expand the business and enable the companies to have access to all our products. Western digital enables people and companies to have our storage, our technology. Will that add up to the economy? That is something I cannot say, but what we do with our technology is we give the best cutting edge technology to the consumer to enable them to have data stored in more products and most importantly we give them the peace of mind that if they store that data on our product it is safe and it stays there for almost forever.
How many countries in Africa does Western Digital operate in, and what’s your biggest market?
Nigeria is one of our top priority countries. We already exist in South Africa, North Africa, Egypt and East Africa and look to expanding across West Africa. We are at least in 20 countries today with direct distribution existing over there with our people, marketing abroad, our technology, our education and everything. However, we are building Africa step by step. Later on, we plan to expand outside those countries as well.
Do you have any office in Nigeria?
As at now, we do not have an office in Nigeria, but maybe in the future something can come of it, it’s not confirmed yet but as of now no. But in the future as things develop we might have an office. However, we currently have distributors running the business through our people, local people who are here on the ground.
Since you came into Nigeria how has the response been? Have you seen growth in the Western Digital since you came to Nigeria?
Definitely, so since we came to Nigeria we built the SanDisk brand and we built the trust, the confidence in the brand today. The people know where they can buy not just the product but the original product, Four-six months before we started doing this with the business. So in 2 quarters maybe we will have the same effect that we have on SanDisk on WD, which is how were going in the market and the business.
Have your efforts towards grey market activities been effective?
It has been very effective, being on the ground, building relationships and establishing distribution networks by visiting our distributors, having a marketing plan with us and marketing as well has been very effective to make sure that those guys buy from us and buy the original products. Another thing worthy to note is that when distributors chose to buy products from outside, if a product gets damaged, they cannot serve their clients through Return Merchandise Authorization (RMA) hence there is no return system. With our distributors and the efforts that we have put in place, if someone buys a product, for instance, a hard drive and something happens, I can go back to my distributor and say “Can I replace it?” and then the distributor is comfortable knowing he can come back to WD and say; “listen I have an RMA, can you replace this?” So there is a lot of trust in the habit of the customer that if I buy here locally then it’s better than me going to buy outside.
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