Bharat Ek Khoj

BHARAT EK KHOJ

Just walk into any of the upcountry
towns or a city, the visitors will be greeted with the over-crowded
marketplaces and traffic chaos on streets. Amdist few unpleasureable
scenarios, there is a booming trade all around. Be it a neighborhood
grocery store owner, a nearby mithai wallah or a pan bhandar wallah
in the vicinity-everybody is happy with few quick bucks. But when it
comes to enabling the IT infrastructure of a retail store, corporate
branch office extension, local bank with few workstations or a
few-story housing complex with communications network, the pure-play
system integrators and solution partners can't be ignored.

IT has made a mark in the country a
decade ago, but has been confined to large cities and MNCs. Off late,
the business dynamics have changed completely. The potential in
upcountry can't be underlined, and the IT vendors are making inroads
to small cities and towns. With a big leap to such naive or less
penetrated geographical locations, the opportunities for resellers,
aggregators and SPs are tremendous. They are not just supplying
hardware, networking products, software solutions, consumables and
services, but they are emerging as a point-of-contacts for vendors,
while the resellers and retailers have already taken multi-vendor
approach for the varied needs of their local customers.

Research firm, Gartner in a recent
study said that the country's tier-2 and tier-3 cities offer the
growth opportunities for ICT spending and is expected to provide the
next level of opportunity for IT vendors across categories. According
to the firm, the client computing is expected to accelerate rural
prosperity and growth in the small business and small office
segments. This trend is likely to reflect the hardware business that
will be the fastest growing area throughout 2014. In addition, the
National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) has
come up with a prediction that more than 3.5 million incremental jobs
are to be created in smaller cities by 2020. If the national
association is to be believed then, it becomes evident that such
geographical destinations are to be the next hot spots of IT
business.

The story of 2,000 small and medium
towns and cities of India have a common background. They do not have
broken connection with the rural hinterland, and at the same time are
integrated with urban lifestyle. The business prospects in semi-urban
and rural markets are potentially huge, though the resellers and
system integrators get wafer-thin margins. These towns generally
demonstrate very slow growth rate primarily due to poor
infrastructure and transportation that discourages new investment by
any trade community or industry. In the hazy environment around IT
business and opportunities, some cities portray a rosy picture. Not
just the IT firms are setting up their footprints, but the tier-2 and
tier-3 partners have a definite role in bringing up the IT
infrastructure up and running.

The analysts and economists have long
acclaimed India's so-called second-tier cities as new forts of
prosperity and incubators of country's growing middle class. Cities
like Pune, a manufacturing and IT hub close to Mumbai, and Ahmadabad,
the biggest city of the wealthiest state, Gujarat has practically
shown the viability of smaller cities to attract big business
opportunities. Coimbatore, a city of about one million Tamils at the
India's southern tip, has expanded from textile manufacturing to soft
ware development and production of autoparts. The smaller cities in
few of the country's prosperous states have a flourishing IT trade,
while the others are depending more on the e-Governence push by 2015.

North Shows the Way

Bareilly-based Manas Pant of E-Plus
Infotech said that the market in the region is still to expand,
though the education sector is prominent there. “The organizations
generally do not give preference to local SIs and SPs. Moreover,
there is a cumbersome registration process,” commented Pant. He
furthur said that according to him, the products and solutions around
hardware and networking are of great demand in the region. “We are
deploying IP-based surveillance systems in the paper industry as well
as at the premise of the Internet services provider in Rudrapur,”
quoted Pant.

Allahabad-based Sandeep Agarwal of
Shree Enterprises said that, the competition is increasing at a high
pace in the region. “During the recent times the competition has
increased manifold and nearly 80 percent of the technology
integration issues are being tackled by local SPs themselves,"
said Agarwal. Agra-based Khalid Hussain of Simco Computer Systems
said that they lack technical support from the vendors on various
products and solutions. “Besides education, the sales usually come
from the home and SOHO segment, and we would be happy, if vendors
come forward for all-round support," commented Hussain.

Jaipur-based Ram Swaroop Yadav of The
Superiors said that, education sector is thriving in the city. "In
many cases, we get vendor support but majority of problems get solved
with ourselves. Firstly, we look out to fix integration issues
locally, and in critical cases we turn towards vendors. Citing an
example from Intel, Yadav said that, their online support was
commendable.

East and North East Come to the
Party

Jamshedpur-based Akhilesh Kumar of
Kailsumi Infotech said that, the government in Bihar and Jharkhand
are inviting large scale tenders for turnkey projects but they have
put very stringent criteria that keeps local SPs and SIs out of it.
“There are enormous opportunities but unfortunately, the regional
players are being eliminated, and those who have a presence in metros
together with vendors bag contracts. The vendors also don't take care
of local SIs,” said Kumar. Kailsumi Infotech have recently deployed
WAN connectivity to few NGOs across their 52 offices in Bihar,
Jharkhand and Punjab. It facilitated the organizations with VSAT and
broadband network.

Navratan Bothra of Bhubneshwar-based
Lalani Infotech said that there is a 15 percent year-on-year growth
in the IT products and solutions in Orissa. “Education and retail
sectors are booming but the lack of product awareness campaigns by
the vendors have added to our woes,” said Bothra. Siliguri-based
Sushil Agarwal of MLA Infotech said that virtualization and
infrastructure management has contributed to their business growth,
and they will be focusing on storage.

West Channel Partners Turn SPs

Dipesh Doshi of Amravati-based Ratnam
Enterprises said that service network is one of the major challenges
in the region. “Most of the vendors don't have a reach in upcountry
and have no service centers, and this is hampering our business,”
said Doshi. He further added that there are tremendous opportunities
in villages and towns, where the government's ICT initiatives are
getting recognition. “We work in the education sector and deployed
curriculum software in many of the municipal corporation schools,”
quoted Doshi. The initiatives of Ratnam Enterprises have been
recognized by various NGOs in the region, and have donated software
in local schools. Doshi said that, they have recently been tied-up
with HP, and the level of support and response from the said vendor
is very encouraging.

Aurangabad-based Pramod Dere of Cyber
Peripherals said that vendors are focusing on metros only and are
underlining the gravity of upcountry. “Unlike others, in the IT
sector there is no uniform pricing, and therefore metros dominate the
small cities. The entry of LFRs into small cities is also becoming a
roadblock to average SIs and resellers in such areas.

Kolhapur-based Praveen Naik of Veetrag
Computers said that due to lack of technological education, the
customers often show reluctance, and they eventually fall to
competition, where they have to quote relatively lower price. “There
are a lot of opportunities in retail, education and datacenters
domain for the solution around WAN, security, connectivity, wireless
and RFID," said Naik. Recently, Veetrag Computers has
implemented few major solutions in the healthcare and textile
industry. “We have deployed networking, firewall, managed network
and wireless solution as well as ERP software to Noble Hospital and
Bhartiya Vidyapeeth in Pune region,” commented Naik. The company
has also implemented campus networking, security solution and fibre
network and deployed IBM i-series server at Soktas India. In
addition, Veetrag provides WAN connectivity between its Bengaluru
corporate office, manufacturing facility in Kohlapur and headquaters
in Turkey.

Rajkumar Jain of Indore-based Business
Automation said that mid-sized SIs have started quoting for even
small projects, which has become a threat to their business. “The
mid-level SIs get better pricing from OEMs, and are eyeing at smaller
deployments. This has posed a challenge to us,” said Jain.
According to him, the extension of mission-mode projects and office
connectivity through SWAN has opened a tremendous opportunity.
Business Automation has recently bagged a contract for e-District in
Madhya Pradesh.

Southern SPs Leverage Better Biz
Environment

PN Prasad of Pondicherry-based
Microplus Computers, who is also advisor to Confed-ITA said that the
business in upcountry is only predominantly confined to SOHO segment.
“Things are changing and though there is a potential in small
cities but unfortunately the resellers are missing out the
opportunities due to lack of support from thevendors,” said. Prasad
said that vendors are not taking proactive approach to SIs and
resellers, and are not educating the partners on new technologies.
According to him, only few SPs have a focus in government space due
to red-tape and corruption. “Low-margins can also be attributed to
the lackluster business in smaller cities,” added Prasad.

Palayamkotti-based V Arumugam of Global
Infosys said that the resellers and SIs lack support from the vendors
in the region. “The market is apparently slow and small problems
arises wherein, we require a support from vendors,” commented
Arumugam. He also said that there is a tremendous scope for education
sector. Global Infosys is also deploying networking products and
solutions to the institutions and corporate in and around
Palayamkotti.

Secunderabad-based GS Thakur of Bluecom
Technologies said that they have their own team for implementation.
“We get good support for selling product but for service point of
view we only get help from Lenovo and IBM. We are having offices
across the country and offer value added service to the clients.
Being a system integrator, we are a customer-oriented company,”
added Thakur. Hyderabad-based Vijay Wadhi of Locuz said that they
have grown more than 20 percent in the current fiscal, and are
optimistic about the market. “We have built solutions for the
enterprise technology needs,” said Wadhi. Locuz offers DC
virtualization, remote infrastructure management and managed hosting
services.

Muntazir Abbas

(muntazira@cybermedia.co.in)