Macman Sanjay Chordia with Wasim Akram

Have you noticed when someone walks into a room with an iPhone or a MacBook how the conversation stops for a moment and everyone’s attention turns to the person carrying it? That’s the magic of Apple.

Apple sits right on top in the PC ecosystem. It has over 90 per cent of the market share for computers costing over Rs 75,000.

Startlingly, Calcutta has now become the largest growing market for Apple products like Macs, iPhones, iPods and other devices and accessories. It’s growing eight times faster than in other metropolitan cities.

Calcutta has always been a price sensitive market. People want their computers cheap and it should be able to do every possible task. Apple would not have been able to make inroads into Calcutta because no businessman wanted to make a huge investment and get meagre returns.

There are two kinds of Mac users — professionals and home users. Ad agencies, television, and sound and film production people must have a Mac to get their work done flawlessly; the specialised software they need works much better on Mac hardware.

Earlier in the decade, the easiest option for procuring an iPod or a MacBook was to get it from Mumbai. Yet there was one shrewd businessman few knew about working out of a small room and selling these devices in Calcutta itself.

Fellow retailers scoffed at Sanjay Chordia for his Mac fascination. His turnover was just around Rs 3 lakh a quarter on Apple. His company, Systematix Media, started in 1987, sold floppy discs and multimedia software like Pinnacle and HCL to keep it afloat.

So strong was his belief in the magic of Mac and innovative MP3 players like the iPod that he would fiddle with his Mac whole night and day, learning each and every software that came with the Mac operating system. He started promoting Apple products in 2001, but there were very few takers.

“I was hell bent on promoting and penetrating the IT market with Mac brands,” he says. He saw early that all PC retailers were making razor thin margins because prices were dropping. Apple kept its prices high and was still raking in huge profits.

Macman Chordia decided to target people with money. In 2006, he opened his first shop at Salt Lake City Center and called it Amaze. Subsequently, he changed the name to Imagine. He was keen to show Calcuttans what Apple products were.

“Apple has a fabulous sense of style, a great sense of industrial design. They are expensive products, but they deliver on what they promise,” says Chordia.

Once more and more Calcuttans started seeing Apple products, they became hooked. From a turnover of Rs 10 lakh a quarter, his sales jumped 30 times. Since then, there was no looking back. Chordia single-handedly led the growth for Apple in Calcutta and last year a second Imagine store opened right at the entrance of New Town City Centre. Apple Premium retail shops all over India are called Imagine.

His support team of qualified engineers has the right to repair iPhones, iPods and even Macs. Unlike in other firms, defects are rectified right here and not sent to Bangalore or Hyderabad. What’s more, the engineers often visit users’ homes for minor repairs. So one doesn’t always have to carry the machine to their workshop at the over crowded Chandni Chowk in Central Calcutta.

Chordia’s instinct to concentrate on the upmarket proved right. Every well-known Calcuttan — from Harsh Neotia, Sourav Ganguly, Sabysachi Mukherjee, Kiran Uttam Ghosh, and Arjun Atwal to Rituparno Ghosh, Gautam Ghosh and even Kolkata Knight Rider’s bowling coach Wasim Akram — owns a MacBook bought here. Akram just needs the right software to study the opponents’ bowling tactics and the cup will be ours.

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