Elcot, channel to tie-up?

NR Sethuraman

Chennai

June 30, 2008

In an interesting turn of events in the Tamil Nadu hardware industry,
Electronic Corporation of Tamil Nadu (Elcot) and channel partners across Tamil
Nadu may soon work together. In April this year, it may be recalled that Elcot
had showed interest in working with the channel on a scheme to offer lower price
laptops to students. The scheme was first announced six months back, but due to
pressure from the channel on vendors like Lenovo and Samsung, the scheme was
soon discontinued.

A few months back The DQ Week had reported Elcot's interest in working with
the channel and the channel's reaction to the partnership with Elcot. Now,
Elcot is reviving the scheme and may rope in channel partners in the state to
provide one-lakh laptops to students at a relatively lower price as compared to
market price. In April Elcot had said that they would offer a three to four
percent margin to channel partners interested in working with them.

As per the recent announcement, Elcot will offer one-lakh laptops to students
across Tamil Nadu starting from primary class to research scholars in the
institution. “As the IT product procurement agency for the government, Elcot
has managed to bring down the prices of IT products with the help of volume
purchases coupled with transparency in procurement and timely payment,” the
Elcot website claimed. The laptops offered through Elcot are guaranteed to
perform for a minimum of three-years and any component failure within
three-years would be replaced, except the battery.

This time Elcot has not mentioned the price it will be selling the laptops
for but has shared that it would offer laptops at 25 to 30 percent less than the
market price. Reliable sources in the channel community hinted about a
development happening between Elcot and the channel, and a possible tie-up
between the two.

When contacted, C Umashankar, MD, Elcot confirmed that Elcot is showing keen
interest in working with the channel and expressed his satisfaction on the
developments between Elcot and the channel. “Yes, we are interested in taking
the channel partners along with us. We are going to discuss it in detail in the
coming week,” said Umashankar.

The laptops on offer are preloaded with Linux operating system along with a
virtualization software called Virtual Box through which any other OS cab be
installed over the existing Linux operating system. The configuration includes
320GB hard disk, Intel/AMD Core 2 Duo processor, 2GB memory, DVD R/W, in-built
camera, modem etc.

Elcot has short-listed Dell and Acer for the prices they are offering. Elcot
is still working on negotiating with the vendors and hoping for a further
reduction in price.