Infrastructure projects on rent by Allied Digital

In the background of the ongoing economic slowdown where corporate customers
are not willing to invest their funds into IT projects or upgrading their
infrastructure, Mumbai-based solution provider Allied Digital Services (ADS) has
created a business division called Asset Lite which will offer finance for IT
procurement to these customers.

While explaining the objective for starting this division, Nitin Shah, CMD,
ADS said there are IT companies like Cisco, IBM, HP and Avaya which extend
finance to corporates who are buying their products. But a customer often needs
financing for the entire solution stack which will be a mix of several vendor
products. Besides, they do not need finance merely for certain hardware or
software component, but for the complete project rollout. In the current
scenario where banks have become very strict about offering finance for IT
infrastructure acquisitions, Shah hopes that more customers will be glad to
avail of Asset Lite's offerings.

“Corporate customers need a neutral agency which will finance their entire
project implementation and that is where Asset Lite comes in. It will give capex
finance to customers, acting like a leasing company, for a stipulated time
frame. At the end of that period, the products will revert back to the ownership
of Asset Lite,” he noted.

The company will also limit itself to offering only IT infrastructure and
will also open this offer to other SPs, besides its parent company-ADS.