Intel's back to school proposition for partners

Mumbai: To help its systems integrator (SI) partners get a better platform to sell nettops, a product that Intel is convinced will find great favor amongst Indian users, the vendor has hit upon a novel concept. Keeping in mind that schools will start opening soon, Intel has tied up with Navneet Publishing where the latter will offer discounts of up to 80 percent on its merchandise to school children who decide to opt for the sub-Rs 10K nettops.

"We believe that nettops is a great product for school children as they can use its basic utilities in small form factors. Given the fact that most Indian SIs can integrate it for under Rs 10K, the price is also suitable for first time users in smaller cities who till now were shying away from buying PCs and laptops because of the hefty price tag,” said Rajesh Gupta, Director-Sales, Intel South Asia.

To be able to do this, Intel is working with a group of five to six SIs in select cities of Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka. It has also drawn up a list of schools where it would set-up melas, so that students can see nettops along with the bundled Navneet content. Spot finance options are also made available for parents who are interested in buying the product. This aside, over the past two months, it has worked with teachers to understand the nature of Navneet-based education content that can be made available to students.

In some cities like Baroda, Intel has also provisioned a van, which doubles as a classroom on wheels. This van with an LCD monitor and various nettops options will tour the schools in the city. It will also have a volunteer from the company who will explain the functionalities of nettops to students.

Interestingly, five of many participating dealers too are jointly using three vans for the same purpose during this 'Back to School' promotion.

Intel's experiment already seems to be paying off. In Pune, Gupta informed, the participating dealers sold around 250 nettops in the first day of this promotion. He is confident that within this month, SIs will be able to sell around 1,000 nettops through this promotion. “Right now, we have limited ourselves to those cities where schools have already opened. Soon, we will extend it to the other states as well,” Gupta added.