An afternoon with Lloyd Mathias

The widely respected marketing honcho, Marketing Head of Hewlett-Packard India, talks about corporate life and entrepreneurship. According to Mathias, HP's primary concern is to reach out to the youth and create a space in their minds

Sohini Sen | Delhi | September 8, 2014

Lloyd Mathias

There are very few in the industry who have had the guts to quit a corporate job to turn entrepreneur. And fewer still whose return to the corporate fold has been as talked about as that of Lloyd Mathias, Marketing Head of Hewlett-Packard India. Mathias has close to 23 years of experience in the management profession – at the very top.

Working in the telecom and consumer goods sector across India and South Asia, Mathias quit to start GreenBean Ventures in 2012. Recently, he joined the corporate world again, as Marketing Head, Printing & Personal Systems, HP India.

Over tea, BestMediaInfo caught up with Lloyd to understand how the journey has been, and what he has learned from his entrepreneur venture.

"Turning entrepreneur was a big challenge and a big opportunity. My biggest focus is to ensure HP's mind space is on a par with HP's dominant market share. For this we will need to get a sharper consumer focus and build a strong emotional connect,” says Mathias.

“HP is a trusted and respected technology brand with leadership across the IT spectrum – from PC's, Notebooks; Printers; Servers and Storage. Its mind space among both the Enterprise and B2B space is overwhelming. Recently, we entered the Mobility space with the launch of our Voice Tab range. This a newer space for us and gets us competing with the mobility players. So our consumer focus needs to be increased.”

According to Mathias, this is only going to be possible if new age tools are used to connect to the consumer, especially digital platforms and deep consumer engagement with the social media. He hopes that his experience as an entrepreneur will help him quite a bit in this new role.

GreenBean Ventures started with go-to-market consulting with large companies – the kind of companies where Mathias and his partners (Sanjeev Sharma and Parikshit Bhasin) had worked in. But soon, the trio realised that most of these big companies wanted the marquee names which helped them with their global counterparts. Thereafter, they started to work with start-ups, most of whom were in the early stages.

"These were the kind of people who understood technology and products but did not have expertise to take their products to the market. They did not have the wherewithal to run distribution, marketing and branding. We started working with such companies and persisted with this model, which worked for us," Mathias explains.

However, the journey wasn't as smooth as it sounds. A lot of these companies had fundamental issues of hiring and retaining quality talent. Also, their ability to pay for consulting services was limited.

"The reality is also that the whole funding eco-system has opened up. Twenty years ago it wasn't easy for a young person to get money behind a business proposition. Today, the situation has changed radically," he adds.

“In fact, the more successful start-ups have been the ones who realised the value of professionalising by hiring top-class talent. So the founding entrepreneurs soon realised that to truly scale up you need to hire high calibre professionals who can bring in skill sets and professionalism. The ones who did reaped the benefits of the system."

Mathias feels that HP is uniquely poised – with the power of a global brand and a robust portfolio. Moreover, HP has significant play across both consumer and enterprise domains, which entails using multiple marketing stimuli – from above-the-line mass media, technology focused gatherings for small and medium businesses, to customized small format events reaching out to select CIO's and procurement officers.

Mathias has identified that the biggest task ahead is the need to target the millennial – the young consumer who has taken new generation computing for granted. HP believes that creating a space for itself in these young people's minds should be a priority. They have signed on Deepika Padukone as the brand ambassador and will be using her in campaigns later this year. “Much like the brand, Deepika represents the successful young Indian who is tech savvy. She will help us sharpen our focus on the young consumer.”

Besides computing products, HP also has a dominant share in the printing category. Printers are increasingly being bought by households with children who need to print for their home projects and assignments. HP was the first to build on this insight and has been consistently targeting this segment with phenomenal success.

HP's presence across a wide swathe of the IT market with strong channel relationships – across both Consumer and Enterprise domains – helps it take a dominant share of the market. So the big challenge and opportunity for Mathias is to ensure brand HP's mindshare leads its overwhelming market presence.

Info@BestMediaInfo.com

Info@BestMediaInfo.com