Interact to expand Indian channel base

With an aim to expand its business activity in the Indian region, UK-based solution provider Interact Commerce Corporation is looking forward to expand its channel network in the country. "In India, we have four independent distributors for ACT", said Thomas Abraham, Director-India, Interact. These are Interlink from Delhi, Camellia Infotech from Mumbai, Trinaina from Hyderabad, and Belladonna from Bangalore. Within two years, it hopes to take this number to 10 and add 40 partners underneath the
distys.

At the moment, Interact has 15 partners working in tandem with its existing distys in various important cities of India. This expansion is aimed to ensure their presence in all the major states of this country.

The company is closely knitting its expansion plans with the launch of ACT 7, an advanced version of its existing sales automation solution. Thomas said they were looking at the Indian SME segment very aggressively. As per their research, there are close to 20,000 SMEs operating from India, so the addressable market is quite huge.

ACT 7 is likely to hit the market in the first week of October. Thomas informed that the product has around four million users worldwide and almost 12,000 companies have so far adopted it for their sales automation. In India, 400 companies have implemented ACT for their operation and around 4,000 users are already using this. 

Specifically talking about the status of their product in Indian market, Thomas said, "We dominate the Indian market specially with reference to the SME segment. Since the concept in India is still new, we are not considering ACT as a box selling product."

As compared to the other existing biggies of the market like SAP, Interact´s ACT- 7 certainly has an upper hand for the SME segment, especially because of its cost effectiveness. It will hit the market in two categories. The first is the Regular ACT 7 and other is ACT 7 Premium. A single license for entry level ACT 7, for 1 to 10 users would cost around Rs 8,500 and its workgroup user category will cost about Rs 12,500. 

Faiz Askari 

New Delhi