Family-size Bytes

APPLE, Tangerine, Tulip, Strawberry. Swirling in fruit cocktails or gracing elegant crystal vases. Soon these names will help you educate your kids, complete a report that never got finished at office, play games, view a digitised film, read books, listen to music, surf the Internet, communicate with other computer buffs and execute a host of other functions, all on a screen atop your study table. For the Indian householder, it's time to graduate from the dowdy typewriter. Armed with sound blasters, video cards and edit programmes, the multimedia PC is set to invade homes.

If the medium is the message, it seems to have gone home. Getting ready to crystallise this nascent market are a host of companies through focused retail outlets, glitzy event promos and attractive souvenirs. In May, the first PC SOHO (small office-home office) exhibition at Bombay's Nehru Centre, where the Wipro Aspire Pentium PC was launched, met with an overwhelming response. Retailer major Tangerine, which has set up nine "friendly family compustores" in four cities, saw about 20,000 visitors handling the machines on display and 40 machines were sold on the spot. Says Om Hemrajani, president of the Tangerine group: "The focus is very clear. We are a family store. I want people to love us." 

A forthcoming chain of Strawberry computer outlets will offer finance schemes, says director Madhu Awatramani. The promoters—the Rs 40-crore Arrow group—are also into plantations and leasing, which will back up the new thrust area: Strawberry the cyberfruit. Distributors Redington India are helping Strawberry to make a colourful break-in with mascot Cyberina on start-up kits, stickers, T-shirts, and stuffed toys, as also campaigns and promotions.

Almost all big names—Compaq, IBM, Wipro Acer, Apple, HCL, Pertech Computers—are in the race. Compaq's Presario and HCL's Beanstalk were the first in the game last year. Among the new arrivals are PCL's Prodigy, Wipro Acer's Aspire and Datamini, Pentium PCs with multimedia features. Most come packaged with custom-built software that turns the machine into a telephone, fax, answering machine, television, audio and video CD player.

Building side by side is a big business in CD-ROMs (compact disc-read only memory), which can store up to 650 MB (megabytes) of data. "To accelerate growth in this market, you have to create the desire to own the product. For that you have to create the experience," says Jayant Sharma, CEO of Lan Multimedia. Lan is creating retail channels, called Head Stops, for its Head CD-ROMs, through browse corners in upmarket stores. Adds Sharma: "With the computer merging into the entertainment business, the entertainment business is looking at computers." 

Sony has tied up with Shemaroo Video and Thakral Computers, a subsidiary of Thakral Brothers, Singapore. "We are offer-ing interactivity with digital sound and high picture quality. The target is the home market," says R.H. Maroo, MD of Shemaroo Video. Some blockbusters like Hum Apke Hain Kaun have been digitised. Also available is edutainment—Business India has released its 1995 issues on CD-ROM.

In the infotech business where statisticsare as reliable as prices, anything from 30,000 to 50,000 multimedia PCs sold last year. The National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) expects 60,000 CD drives to be installed by March 1997, while the end of the decade should see 1. 5 million multimedia PCs in Indian homes. Sales growth is 20 per cent a year and would be more, if not for the steep costs. Prices vary from Rs 70,000 to Rs 2 lakh. "Multimedia is more of a need now than luxury. But there's no boom because of the high duties," says Dewang Mehta, NASSCOM executive director. Customs duties hog 71 per cent of costs. "When they come down, prices will drop by over Rs 70,000and there'll be a boom," says Sanjiv Mital of IBM, which has introduced its multimedia pentium, Aptiva, at under Rs 1.4 lakh.

Players in the assembled PC market offer this range but, increasingly, the discerning user wants a nametag. That's because an assembled machine finds it tough to optimise performance when the various applications work together; even the reputed brands have had to discontinue models because of performance flaws. "Last year, of all those who consulted me on what to buy, 80 per cent chose brand names," says Harsh Jhaveri of the Microcomputer Users Club. 

Says Ravi Swaminathan of Compaq: "We see the market expanding significantly over a three-year period." To speed up the process, the sellers are offering finance. Compaq has tied up with Countrywide and Standard Chartered, and with RPG-Sprint for e-mail access at special prices.

But even top brands cannot overcome the technical glitches. An introductory offer for Microsoft Network with Windows 95 is useless because Microsoft does not have a local log-in facility. An Internet-ready machine needs MTNL permission to hook up a modem, and you have to pay Rs 15,000 to VSNL for a full-fledged Internet account. Shell accounts, which do not have access to graphics, cost Rs 5,500.

The CD packs too are not always tailored for Indian needs. It is here that Indian players can score. So Wipro Aspire has software for writing in Hindi pre-loaded. Says Samir Kochar of PCmarket leader PCL: "We are positioned not as an entertainment gizmo, but as an education machine. We are offering an ideas box versus the idiot box. We say, get your child's priorities right."

 He could well be right. As multimedia PCs become householder-friendly, a vast new world of infotainment can open up at the touch of a key, within the confines of home.