MUMBAI: Allied Computer International (ACi), the notebook specialist from UK, has has appointed Lintas Integrated Marketing Action Group (Imag) as its communications and marketing partner in India. The account size is pegged between Rs 80 - 100 million according to the ACi chairman Hirji Patel.

According to Lintas Imag director Ashish Bhasin, " ACi is a high quality, affordably priced laptop. The teak at hand is to build an Image for this brand and capture a large market share."

Commenting further Bhasin adds, "I think it was integrated marketing solutions that enabled us to get this account. Also, the reason why Imag is scoring is due to the out ideation as well as implementation strength which we execute through our specialist divisions."

Bhasin pointed out that he was particularly pleased that their integrated marketing initiative that they pioneered in India was being found useful by their clients. Debashis Das, president, Linterland spearheaded the task of ensuring a complete integrated marketing solution from Imag for ACi.

ACi seems to have big plans. According to Patel, their IPO is slated to take place in September 2006. Says Hirji, "The role of Imag will be to implement our full rounded marketing plan. We along with Imag will be looking at hitting the education market are going to unleash our 5K notebooks in the next couple of months. We will be focussing on bottomline marketing for the next four months; post which we will get into other mass media.

Patel also stated that ACi was planning to set up shop in Dubai within a month and within six months they will be entering the South and East African markets, Srilanka, and Australia as well.

ACi India marked their entry in India with a collaboration with four individuals in 1999. In 2002, they set up an independent unit and formed ACi Asia annulling the former entity.

ACi, with their entry instigated a price war with the launch of the 50K notebooks. The competitors in the space being Compaq, IBM and Toshiba. The were also the first to offer the AGP (Accelarated Graphics Port) technology in India.

According to Patel, ACi Asia in 2004 created history with the introduction of ACi 29999 - the 30k notebook. The notebook industry as a whole witnessed a 250 per cent growth last year.

Patel concludes, "Before we get into our IPO next September, our agenda for the next six months is to focus on the education market with self schemes to break the 20K price barrier."