ECS signs SES technologies as national distributor

Mumbai

September 20th, 2007

After months of inactivity in the channel space in India, Taiwan-based
Elitegroup Computers Systems is now making up for it. Just two months after
signing up Zenith Technologies as its national distributor, the vendor has now
brought in another national distributor - SES Technologies. Though ECS has been
shipping products to SES Technologies, the official announcement of the tie up
will be made later this week.

Not so long ago, ECS had Jupiter International, Mediatech and Cyberstar
Infocom as its distributors. But it wanted to work with distributors who would
focus on its brand rather than offer it along with a plethora of other brands.
This is why it has signed up with Zenith and SES.

Initially, both Zenith and SES will distribute different models of RCS
motherboards. This move has been taken to reduce channel conflict and avoid a
price war, informed Esther Teng, ECS' Regional Marketing Manager, Channel
Business Division, Mainboard and Add-on Card business unit. "We want to
capture 20 percent of the PC business in the country," she claimed.

ECS' sales come from OEM/ODM, systems integrators (SI) and the dealer
channel. In India the contribution from the OEM/ODM segment is the highest at
around 65 percent, followed by the SI community at 20 percent. The contribution
from the channel has been woefully small at 20 percent.

Part of this low dealer channel sales came from the fact that the vendor was
not highly focused on it so far. For the past few years, the company did not
have a dedicated person heading the region. The earlier sales manager who looked
after India was also handling other markets like Turkey, North Africa, etc, due
to which India did not get the requisite attention to boost sales through the
channel.

Now the company is trying to remedy this situation and has appointed Ken
Cheng as Sales Manager for the company's Channel Business Division for
motherboards and add-on card business units. It is following this up by shortly
opening an office in India and is scouting for local personnel who can drive
business in the country. ECS has set up a target of getting at least 30 percent
of its Indian business from the channel within the next two years.

To achieve this, the company has signed up Digicom as its service partner and
has currently got six RMA centers. It has also made provisions to keep buffer
stock available with its distributors to cut down on the turnaround time in
service related issues. "We realize that service is a very crucial issue in
India and are planning to open some more RMA centers in the country," Teng
noted.