IT Panchayat : Aurangabad Partners Battle Slowdown Blues

The IT Panchayat, organized by The DQ Week and DQ Channels, reached
Aurangabad recently. Despite the pressure of month-end more than 40 partners
turned up for the event. The panelist for the discussion included Yogesh Niyati
of Ingram Micro and Ajay Mittal of Rashi representing the distributors while
Mahesh Vitake, President, Aurangabad IT Association put forth the channel
perspective. The discus­sion was moderated by Shivangi Yadav, Executive Editor,
The DQ Week.

Starting the Panchayat and discussing the impact of slowdown Niyati said,
“The region has started witnessing a slowdown, and the cash flow is becoming a
problem. The problem is not so much because of the direct impact of recession
but because everyone whether it is the partners or the customers are becoming
cautious. They are thinking before they spend.”

Vitake on the other hand insisted that the city was definitely witnessing
slowdown. “Automobile sector forms the backbone of the IT business in Aurangabad.
We all know how badly the sector has been hit, in fact many automobile companies
have for the moment either stopped production completely or have been completely
gone slow. Employee's have been forced on leaves or

put on the bench. All this is having an impact on the IT market and forcing us
to concede that hard times are here.”

Discussing the same Mittal of Rashi said, “If you just look at the Indian
situation the slowdown is not actually that great but because of the exposure in
media it has made people very cautious. So while people do have money on them,
they are holding on now instead of investing in the business. That is the reason
why you are seeing the cash flow problem, since people want to take all the
extra money out of business.”

The panelists: (L-R) Mahesh Vitake, President, Aurangabad IT Association; Ajay Mittal of Rashi and Yogesh Niyati of Ingram Micro

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Elaborating on the other problems that the region faces Vitake said, “We have
coined this word for locations like Aurangabad 'upcountry' and after coining the
adage, the distributors have just left us to fend for ourself. No distributor
has any direct presence here and we are most often left in the lurch for a long
time before they even hear our complaints.”

“Both Ingram and Redington have people based out of Nashik which is a good
six hours away from here and there too they have no warehouse. So the place from
where the goods are dispatched to us is Pune. So the turnaround time for
anything even deliver of products on new billings is minimum seven days,” Vitake
elaborated.

Another partner from the crowd added, “The situation is peculiar for us,
while for the disti we are upcountry for our customers Pune is not that far. All
distis offer a separate price to us and a completely different price to dealers
in Pune. That means it is not a level playing field, in such a harsh times the
disti and channel partners should work together to make sure that all markets
survive and not play this competitive price policy.”

Reacting to the same Mittal said that Rashi had a direct prescence and an
office in the city and he would be glad to personally help everyone out, but
most partners agreed that their problems with Rashi were immediately dealt with.

“As far as a level playing field is said, partners in Pune do much larger
numbers that partners in Aurangabad, and that is why they are given seperate
prices. If partners in Aurangabad can generate the same volumes we would be more
than happy to provide similar prices to them,” argued Niyati of Ingram.

However, all the partners present agreed that this was just an excuse was
taken by the disti's to play a price game. “The market in Aurangabad is such
that we will have lesser business than Pune, but that does not mean that you
wipe out a thriving IT market, you need to make concession for places depending
on their demand. While we might not have great volumes but we do have consistent
business, and that should be appreciated and encouraged by the disti,” Vitake
added.

Vitake also took the opportunity to remind present partners to actively
become a part of the association and make it powerful so that the body can work
towards resolving partner issues with both the distis and the vendors.

The evening also saw presentations by Ajay K Gupta of Microworld, Sushil K
Shivani of Hitachi, ASN Prasad of Sify and Vijay Kadam of TVS-E, who informed
partners about their new product offerings.

DQW News Bureau