Pulastya Dave(PD): Is this your first visit to India?
Jeff Poggi(JP): This is my second visit, the last one was 5 years back.
PD: What has been your background with Harman?
JP: I started with the Harman car audio division as a Quality Engineer in a Transducer factory in 1994, and subsequently spent time in Process Engineering, Project Management, and Sales and Marketing culminated with the position of Vice President, Global Sales And Marketing, Car Audio SBU, Lifestyle Division. Two Years ago, I moved into my current role as Vice President and General Manager of the Luxury Audio Business Unit.
PD: What is going to be your focus for the Indian Market?
JP: At Harman, we have a very successful model, which can be described as go local for local, in region, language and culture, in order to really understand the business and so wherever we go, yes we are an American co, but the team in each country is local and within those regions you have to have sub divisions due to different cultures involved. We try to get the local people involved to be the ambassadors to build the trust factor in the end users. When we look at the global market, some are growing and some aren’t – SE Asia has had a tough year with currency devaluation with the markets going into a tailspin, whilst markets like India are growing and so we want to feed the market and capitalise on the opportunities.
PD: According to you, what are the peculiarities of the Indian market?