Bharti Teletech gets aggressive in distribution space

New Delhi: Bharti Teletech, a company that has erstwhile been better known as a telephone instrument manufacturer, is getting aggressive about its role as a distributor. While it forayed into the distribution space in 2005 with Blackberry and Motorola mobiles, it is only now that the company is getting bullish about this business vertical and exploring its different avenues.

Sunil Goyal, CEO, Bharti Teletech shared that it was only six months back when the company started thinking about positioning itself as a distribution house. “Before we were just leveraging on the Beetel brand and selling consumer products in telecom. Now we plan to go pan-India with our extensive range of IT products and will do so step-by-step. We have already started our foray into the top 100 cities in May this year and will have established our presence in these cities by this August,” stated Goyal.

Asked why Bharti Teletech decided to focus on distribution, Goyal said, “We did a study on Beetel and found that it stands for dependability. That gave us the confidence to leverage on the brand and get into this vertical. Our belief at Bharti Teletech is that adoption of technology will grow. To encash on the portfolio of growing technology, we are looking at those who want to develop their products but don't have their direct presence in India. Not to mention, the consumption of technology is very fast here. Our first exposure to the scenario was with mobile phones.”

The company was earlier focusing exclusively on system integrator (SI) partners with its products like Polycom and Sharp and Sanyo projectors. “We have a huge portfolio for SIs and keep enhancing it. These are products that SMEs, large corporate and government need and we can offer them that. We added LCD panels to the list, as offering complete boardroom solutions is key. We have Panasonic, Samsung and Sharp brand of LCDs. Even the Logitech products are targeted at the corporate segment and catered to through our SIs,” said Goyal.

Currently Bharti Teletech has relations with 200 SIs of which about 120-130 are billing with them every month.

In the retail segment, an area the company has just recently got into, Bharti Teletech has added Transcend products. “Transcend will be sold across all verticals-corporate, IT channel, retail channel. This is where we have multiple partners-500 across the country,” divulged Goyal.

He added that Bharti Teletech's focus is consumer IT-branded products. Large retail formats (LFRs) will be another focus area. Though Goyal made their SI plans evident, he refused to divulge much about the company's mass retail channel initiatives, citing that it was an area they were just getting into and were still in the process of finalizing details.

Speaking about their channel policies, Goyal added that they would be different for each vertical.

“The kind of SIs we are looking to add to our network include those with sound knowledge about various technologies, have the ability to service, have good relations with resellers and consumers and financial strength,” said Goyal. For the corporate channel the distributor currently has a scheme running this quarter on all product categories. Goyal also shared that regional meets for the channel are conducted on a regular basis.

Distribution tie ups

Blackberry

Motorola handsets

Polycom

Casio digital cameras

Sanyo digital still cameras and camcorders

Transcend memory products (card memory, flash memory, USB flash module), lifestyle products (digital photo frame)

Logitech home entertainment and business process group product

Apple iPhone