SanDisk Corp looks to India for growth

KOLKATA: Sandisk Corporation, the inventor of flash storage cards and also its largest supplier in the world, has identified India as one of its prime markets for growth. While the US-based company has a big presence in the mobile phone and memory card markets, it now plans to create a market for USB backup drives and solid-state drives (SSD) in the country. While USB backup drives will be available in the Indian retail market, SSD will initially be an OEM product for computer manufacturers. However, SanDisk will evaluate later the possibility of launching SSD in the Indian retail market.

The company aims to promote SSD as an alternative to magnetic hard drives currently used in computers.

Talking to ET, SanDisk country manager (India & Saarc) Manisha Sood said that SSD laptops will soon be launched by one of the computer vendors in India. ���Research firm Gartner has projected that one in five computing devices will have SSDs by 2011-12,��� she said.

SSD are said to make laptops more efficient and lighter. On the other hand, USB backup drives will allow consumers to backup their entire PC data conveniently. This product will be available between 8GB to 64 GB capacity and is priced between $39.99 and $199.99 in the US. ���There is a growing demand in India for high-capacity USB drives with safety enhancements to ensure security of data and content sharing. USBs are seeing an unprecedented demand in India from this year,��� said Ms Sood.