CITA to hold green IT expo

Cuttack: The city of Cuttack, located about 22km from Bhubaneshwar, is going to host a green exposition in April. The expo will be organized by Cuttack IT Association (CITA) and will promote environmentally-friendly products in the IT sector.

Arun Kumar Dey, President, CITA, said, “We have had an excellent response from the dealers in the area. Although the event was originally planned for three days, we are looking to extend it to five days.”

The expo will have around 50 stalls, with representation from major vendors, such as HP, Lenovo, Compaq, LG and HCL. The footfall is expected to be around 5,000, with the numbers increasing if extension plans are successful.

“All major IT products will be on display at the expo. Laptops, desktops, cameras as well as video surveillance equipments, which have become very popular post the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai,” added Dey.

Talking about the IT market is Cuttack, Dey elaborated, “Around 20-25 percent of business in the area comes from the commercial sector and the rest comes from education and retail. There are around three or four engineering colleges here and that caters to a lot of our business.”

While SoHo and educational institutions together form the largest chunk of IT users in the city, of late the government sector is showing signs of emerging as the next big user segment, due to increased e-governance initiatives by the state government. Cuttack has 10 large retail outlets and the city has also seen a transition from white-box PCs to branded ones and from desktops to notebooks.

CITA came into being in 2002 to deal with channel partner issues specific to Cuttack. They now have 33 members on board. Some of its members are also part of the IT Association of Orissa (ITAO), which addresses state specific issues amongst resellers, distributors and vendors. With the expo, CITA aims to create consumer awareness and pave way for interaction between channel partners in Orissa.