SanDisk Working With Authorities to Fight Counterfeit Products in India

Global memory storage maker SanDisk on Wednesday said it is working with Indian authorities to clamp down counterfeit products, which is leading to losses on revenue and brand equity.

"Because our brand is so well-recognised and trusted, we pay the premium of lot of counterfeiting on it. These are fake products," its country manager Rajesh Gupta told PTI on the sidelines of a company event in Mumbai.

When asked about the revenue losses because of such counterfeiting, Gupta said, "Oh yes, (it is) huge. That is an impact", but also added that this also leads to loss of reputation for the company as fake products do not last.

The company has been raiding such market places and streets along with the police where it finds such counterfeit products being sold, Gupta said, adding that in Mumbai it raided a street outside the iconic CST railway station twice along with Government Railway Police in the last six months.

Apart from the raids, the company has also notified the Customs Department giving names of the 4 companies who are authorised to import SanDisk products, so that action against the rest becomes easier.

It can be noted that with the spurt in smartphones and increased usage of digital cameras, the demand for memory sticks has increased substantially in the country and hence, there is the proliferation of such fakes on the streets, which are available at a tenth of the cost of the original products.

Gupta hinted that sale of some scrap material by the company may have a role to play in this. "There are certain pieces of flash memory, which also comes out of our manufacturing, that we scrap because we feel it is not a sustainable flash," he said.

Apart from raiding, Gupta said the company is also working on building awareness through the social media and conducting programmes for genuine retailers.

Gupta was speaking on the sidelines of the launch of two products by the company. It launched a 512GB Extreme Pro SDXC Card (priced at Rs. 51,990) and Extreme Pro microSDXC and microSDHC cards (starting Rs. 4,700), with write speeds of write speeds of up to 90MB/s and transfer speeds of up to 95MB/s.