Vardhan has built type-tested MV switchgear for industrial plants for over two decades. Their panels held up well in technical evaluations, and their prices were competitive.
But data centre developers were becoming India's fastest-growing buyers of switchgear, and Vardhan kept arriving too late. By the time an enquiry reached their sales team, the electrical consultant had already listed three approved makes. Vardhan was rarely one of them, so the best they could do was quote as an alternative, on price.
Their marketing at the time was a product catalogue, a website last updated in 2019 and a stall at ELECRAMA.
Across 140 data centre projects in India, 18 consultancies wrote the electrical specifications for most of them. Vardhan had active relationships with two.
Approved makes carry forward from project to project. Getting onto one list meant showing up in the templates engineers reuse, not in their inbox.
In interviews, consultants cared most about arc-flash protection and uptime during maintenance. Vardhan had strong test data on both and had never published it.
Ready-to-paste specification clauses, single-line diagrams and CAD blocks for every panel configuration, hosted on a consultant portal.
Six technical sessions presented by Vardhan's own design engineers, each followed by a one-to-one review offer for live projects.
Targeted ads and outreach to the 18 consultancies and 60 EPC contractors, with a weekly sync between our team and Vardhan's regional sales heads.
A CRM view of every data centre project by stage and consultant, so sales knew which specifications were being written each month.
Specifications take time to show up. The first quarter was mostly groundwork; by the fifth, Vardhan was being named on more new projects each quarter than in the whole year before we started.
"We used to hear about data centre projects when the tender came out. Now our sales team knows which consultant is writing the spec, and usually they've already sat through one of our sessions."
Head of Sales, Vardhan Switchgear