Iris Computers : Eyeing Upcountry Markets

Clocking a turnover figure of Rs 764 crore was not a cakewalk for Iris
Computers in the face of a slowdown that started making inroads in India as
well. But, the company managed to pull this off and grew by 33 percent in
2007-08 over the previous fiscal. It now aspires to touch Rs 1,000 crore mark by
2010.

To give a leg up to its growth plans, last fiscal Iris entered into an
agreement with US-based JMG, an oil company, for a total funding of up to $5
million. The company used this funding to open up branches and augment sales
force across the country for better penetration into the upcountry regions. It
opened five new branches in C-class cities like Nagpur, Surat, Varanasi,
Panchkula and Madurai; and now plans to add Ranchi, Hubli and Karnal to this
list.

A major deal for the company was the supply of over 3,000 laptops on credit
to about 17 colleges run by Kolkata-based Techno India. This deal was valued at
Rs 7 crore and required Iris to cross check each laptop and arrange for a number
of service camps for students so that they could look at the equipments more
closely. While other companies backed out of this project, Iris decided to go
ahead with it and delivered the machines within a month.

It also supplied APC online UPS to about 15 prisons in Bihar this year, a
project worth Rs 1 crore. In fact, to just cater to this project, the company
opened a branch office in Patna within a day and supplied UPS to Patna-based
jails, the next day. Last fiscal the company took up the distributorship of LG
monitors and also tied up with HCL, APC and Dell. Recently it tied up with
Microsoft to bundle the latter's operating system along with desktops and
computers that they further sell it to their resellers.

Last fiscal, the company did not add much of the manpower, however as part of
its distribution strategy this year, the company will take the headcount to 240
by recruiting more of sales and marketing professionals alongside technical
support and customer care professionals.

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Profile
CEO: Sanjiv Krishen Start-up year: 1996 Employees: 219 Collaborations: IBM, Lenovo, HP, Microsoft, Raritan, BenQ, Acer, HCL, Dell, APC Address: A-155, Road #4, Mahipalpur, New Delhi - 110037 Tel: 011-26782505 Website: www.iriscomputers.net SILVER CLUB RANK (2006-07): 5

The company's major share of revenues came from the North region with almost
44 percent of the revenues pouring in from the branch offices in North alone.
This was followed by South, contributing close to 25 percent revenue. West
accounted for 23 of the revenue while East brought in the rest.

HP, Lenovo and IBM remained the top performing brands for the company this
year as well with about 40 percent of the revenue coming from HP sales and
another 40 percent from Lenovo. IBM accounted for 10 percent business.

The company to suffer Rs 20 crore as write-offs in 2007-08. It also
discontinued the distribution business for Xenitis and BenQ and signed up IBM
for Infoprint.