AIT holds meet to discuss 'difficult times'

Bangalore

May 9, 2008

Association for IT (AIT), Bangalore conducted their fellowship meet last
week. Owing to the recent slowdown the industry is witnessing, the discussion
was centered on 'managing the difficult times.' The meet saw members
interacting and discussing current issues bothering the industry.

On the objective of arranging such a meeting, R Sridhar, Secretary, AIT said,
“Currently we are witnessing a slowdown in the industry and being in a city
like Bangalore channel partners are apprehensive about the growth in the
industry. So we planned to invite the industry experts and let them talk about
the current situation.”

Important issues like the effect of the US slowdown on global economy, impact
of policy changes on outsourcing and its effect on Indian IT industry, effect of
inflation on growth of IT hardware in India and how to manage the crisis period
were discussed during the meet. The panel consisted of S Rajendran, CMO, Acer
India, HV Harish, Partner, Grant Thronton and P Ravindranath, Director-Strategic
Business Development, HP India.

Rajendran of Acer was of the opinion that the industry people need not worry
about the slowdown. “Though the slowdown is a reality one should not worry
about it, as India and China are major markets,” Rajendran said. He also
advised the channel to be very diligent and position themselves as value added
retailers/dealers than mere box pushers. He also asked the channel to identify
their strengths and build upon it.

Harish attributed the spiraling prices and global recession to the rising
petroleum prices. Pointing out that the status of the middle class has seen
improvement, he said, “In a country like India, we have an added problem of
poor distribution of wealth, which adds to the misery of the commoners. Since
there is a very significant increase in the urban middle class population, PC
buying will register a growth but it will be slow growth as compared to the
previous years.”

Ravindranath counseled the channel to diversify into activities centered on
IT. He spoke on the essentiality of human resource for horizontal growth in the
organization. He also urged dealers to train their manpower to take up
challenges posed by rapid technological development. “We had a very
informative and interactive panel discussion on the topics,” claimed Sridhar.