Compuage Infocom : Partnering For Growth

After posting 40 percent growth in 2006-07 and almost doubling it to 103
percent in the last fiscal with a turnover of Rs 612 crore, Compuage Infocom has
a lot of reasons to smile.

Last year, the distributor realized that to fuel growth it needed to reach
out to partners in the smaller cities and therefore launched the Destination
India marketing campaign under which it connected with 21,000 partners in 60
cities in a series of roadshows. To buffer this campaign, the company also
opened branches in 10 cities to have a base of 45 offices nationally. Another
initiative that it undertook was the introduction of MatchPoint-a quarterly
newsletter for its shareholders and ChannelPoint-a newsletter for its partners
which will talk about the latest vendor alliance and channel training products
it will undertake.

Recently it also introduced Pricepoint, which is a pricelist that will be
sent out to all its channel partners to keep them posted about the updated
prices of the various products. It will be also carry details of the various
channel schemes and promotional activities it will carry out during the quarters
as well.

Last fiscal, Compuage was on a vendor signing spree and tied up with K7
Computing, Linksys, Sprint, Targus and HP for its all-in-one business. Now the
company has 13 vendors in its kitty. Besides this, it also increased its
manpower strength from 350 to 450 and its channel base from 4,000 partners to
6,000. Last year, Compuage also invested Rs 50 lakh to upgrade its ERP, which it
deployed in 2001. This fiscal it has identified six areas-components, systems,
networ­king, power protection, peripherals and lifestyle-that it wants to add to
its product portfolio. Last year Creative Labs awarded the 21-year old company
as the Best Distributor for Asia-Pacific. The company also relaunched its
website in August to update investors and partners about its latest ventures.

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Profile
MD: Atul Mehta Start-up year: 1987 Employees: 400 Collaborations: Creative, Toshiba, AMP, APC, Numeric, Kingston, Linksys, AOC, HP, K7 Computing, Sprint, Targus Address: #3 Dhuru Building, First Floor, 329 VP Road, Mumbai - 400004 Tel: 022-22799999 Website: www.compuageinfocom.com SILVER CLUB RANK (2006-07): New Commer